Biography

Dr. Ashir Ahmed is an associate professor at the faculty of information science and electrical engineering at Kyushu University in Japan. His research focuses on developing frugal technologies to achieve social goals, and he has established the Global Communication Center (GCC) within Grameen Communications in Bangladesh to pursue this mission. Dr. Ahmed’s research team at Kyushu University has developed numerous national and international projects, including GramHealth, a $300 portable clinic for unreached people, GramCar, a ride-sharing model for rural and urban female communities, GramAgri, an ICT-based farming and marketing platform, and GramClean, a sustainable community cleaning initiative.

Dr. Ahmed is a core contributor to the Yunus and Shiiki Social Business Research Center at Kyushu University, where he promotes social businesses to Japanese organizations and has assisted in creating a number of social businesses, such as Grameen Euglena and Grameen SunPower. He is also the founder and CTO of SocialTechJapan, a social business company that develops and deploys technologies to solve social issues. In addition, he organizes an international conference on “Healthcare, SDGs and Social Business” since 2017.

Dr. Ahmed received his Ph.D. from Tohoku University in 1999 and has worked with Avaya Labs (former Bell Labs) and NTT Communications, Japan. He has authored two books on ICT and social business in Japanese and co-authored over 100 scientific papers. Dr. Ahmed is a popular speaker at international events on digital health, ICTD, social business, reverse innovation, and post-SDGs. He has received numerous national and international awards since childhood and enjoys cooking, writing books on ICT for development and social business, and performing as an MC for cultural shows.