Matthew Kam

Matthew Kam is an Assistant Professor with the Learning Sciences group in the Human-Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. His recent Ph.D. dissertation investigates how e-learning games on cellphones can be designed to extend literacy and second language learning among children in rural areas and the urban slums in the developing world. He is currently scaling up this research project to conduct a controlled experiment involving 800 village children in 40 rural schools in India, with early replication underway in Kenya and China. His research has received major sponsorship from the MacArthur Foundation, Microsoft, National Science Foundation, Nokia, Qualcomm and Verizon. It was featured in the press in India, ABC News and a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation television documentary. Previously, with the support of a fellowship from the United Nations and University of California, Berkeley, Matthew participated as a third-party evaluator of a microfinance transaction technology in Uganda spearheaded by Hewlett-Packard. As a former administrator, he served on a US$5 million, 18-month project in the Singapore Armed Forces, where he helped to manage its finances and organize the logistics for 200,000 personnel. Matthew earned all his degrees at the University of California, Berkeley: Ph.D. in Computer Science with a minor in Education, B.S. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences, and B.A. in Economics.