TMCD DPhil Student Marco Haenssgen was runner-up in the Student IT Innovation category of this year's OxTALENT awards for his use of satellite maps for household survey sampling in rural China.

The annual OxTALENT awards recognise members of the University who have made innovative use of digital technology in order to:

• Foster learning and academic practice at either undergraduate or postgraduate level;
• Develop more effective links between teaching and research; or
• Improve impact through outreach and public engagement.

Marco studies mobile phone diffusion and healthcare access in rural India and China. Faced with resource constraints for a household survey in rural China, he developed an innovative approach to village and household sampling using geographical coordinates and aerial images from Google Maps and Bing Maps.

Marco’s approach helped reduce the workload of his research team in China by at least 64 to 80 person-days, and reduced the need for transportation, accommodation, subsistence, and insurance expenditures for at least 8 to 10 days. It also cut costs by £4,500, or 30%.

The judges particularly commended the replicability of Marco’s approach for other students in resource-constrained research environments. In order to allow more research students to benefit from this innovative methodology, the methodology was taught to DPhil students in Trinity Term 2015.

Find out more here:http://blogs.it.ox.ac.uk/oxtalent/2015/06/16/student-it-innovation-4