The Center for the Study of Language and Information (CSLI) will host a new fellowship program for technology professionals beginning this fall. The Reuters Foundation Digital Vision Fellowship Program will be sponsored by the Reuters Foundation, a charitable trust funded by international news organization Reuters.

Each fellowship will last one academic year, during which fellows will take on projects using technology for humanitarian purposes. The goal of their work is to create information technology answers for problems in developing countries, such as improving health care and education.

"This is a program somewhat similar to the Knight [fellowship] program, but instead of journalists we're inviting mid-career technology professionals to come and work with us for nine months," said Byron Reeves, the Paul C. Edwards Professor of Communication and director of CSLI. "The mission is to transfer knowledge about technology from the university to the real world," Reeves said.

Reeves expects that fellows will develop prototypes for using technology in disaster relief, helping the disabled gain access to computing and encouraging commerce ventures in the developing world.

The fellows coming to Stanford this October are being selected from a group of large technology companies that will grant their employees paid leave, while the Reuters Foundation will sponsor the program's infrastructure, Reeves said. The program is slated to begin with three years of funding, although Reeves anticipates it will continue beyond that time. Eventually, he expects the number of fellows to increase to 10 or 12.