Development Impact Lab (DIL) Annual Report 2016-2017

Headquartered at the University of California, Berkeley (UCB), DIL was launched in 2012 with support from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), in collaboration with the U.S. Global Development Lab. Led by the Blum Center for Developing Economies and the Center for Effective Global Action (CEGA), DIL leverages the innovative capacity of world-class universities to design "development solutions," which couple new technologies with novel economic and behavioral interventions. These solutions are rigorously evaluated in the real world and then iteratively redesigned based on field results. Ultimately, proven solutions are transitioned to partners for scale-up and dissemination. DIL has invested in over 135 projects across 35 countries, through research awards, travel and exploratory grants, and student prizes such as the Big Ideas Contest. The lab's approach, known as Development Engineering (Dev Eng), integrates innovations in the social sciences into the iterative design of new technologies, building scalability and sustainability into the innovation process. In 2016, DIL focused on institutionalizing the Dev Eng approach. The lab supported faculty-led research, launched an open access journal called Development Engineering, and established a Dev Eng PhD concentration at UC Berkeley. DIL also invested in a number of development solutions, not only by funding research, but also by supporting "top-up" grants, data visualizations, and animations to accelerate the translation of projects in the pipeline. These efforts have created scientific breakthroughs, generated actionable evidence for development practitioners, and catalyzed changes in policy globally. One major milestone in 2015-16 was Facebook's acquisition of the "Community Cellular Network" technology, a suite of hardware and software that can provide low-cost, solar-powered mobile connectivity for remote, rural communities. DIL seed-funded the project, led by Berkeley professor Eric Brewer, which was initially prototyped in Papua, Indonesia and is now being scaled in the Philippines, through partnership with a local telephone company. The journal Development Engineering: The Journal of Engineering in Economic Development was also launched in May 2016, featuring rigorous studies of promising development technologies, including clean cookstoves and rural electricity grids. The journal is committed to learning from success and failure alike, and its first issue is currently available on ScienceDirect or at http://elsevier.com/locate/deveng. Dev Eng encourages collaboration and learning among engineers, economists, and other scientists, and is committed to promoting high-quality research by scholars from low- and middle-income countries. The journal accepts manuscripts on a rolling basis, with submission to the second issue closing in Summer 2017.