Project Mentor: Prof. Eric Obeysekare, Computer Science and Engineering
2026 Impact Fellows:
Eyob Abate '28
Lucy Cottrill '29
Nandita Ganesan '29
Amber Seniuk '28
Project Description:
Across rural India, the internet is more than a communication tool; it is a gateway to learning, opportunity, and mobility. Yet for millions of families, smartphones and mobile data remain an unaffordable luxury. In response, communities have created ingenious systems of accessing phones, sharing hotspots, and exchanging connectivity, a phenomenon we call “megabyte sharing.”
This research and social innovation project explores how these informal digital economies operate and what they reveal about resilience, cooperation, and creativity in low resource contexts. This GSIF team will investigate how students, teachers, and families acquire, trade, and share phones and data, how social trust sustains these networks, and how these grassroots innovations are reshaping access to education and opportunity. Working alongside Agastya International Foundation, the team will translate these insights into real world solutions to transform digital education.
During fieldwork in 2026, the team interviewed 35 individuals on the Agastya campus and in the nearby town of Kuppam. Through these interviews, they gained a deeper understanding of how rural community members get online including hearing about a lot of sharing and collaborative activities. The incoming team will continue that research and prototype potential solutions to address the digital divide.
From Bytes to Brilliance invites students to question traditional narratives of digital divide and to reimagine the future of learning from the ground up. By uncovering how rural India learns to earn, connects to grow, and shares to survive, this project seeks to turn scarcity into innovation and connectivity into collective empowerment.
Students interested in community engagement, engineering & technology for social impact, education innovation, social sciences, or sustainable development are encouraged to apply.