Global grand challenges.
Groundbreaking impact innovation.
IDEMS collaborates with innovative expert researchers and local communities around the world to develop pioneering digital interventions and infrastructure designed to work in – and scale across – low-resource contexts for responsible, sustainable global impact.
The future of social impact
Our transdisciplinary, research-based Collaboratories are multiyear collaborations with expert researchers and community organisations around the world. We work together to responsibly conceive, develop and scale digital interventions to global grand challenges.
Explore an IDEMS Collaboratory
COLLABORATORY IMPACT INNOVATION
Evidence-based digital interventions
We’re at the frontier of impact innovation: our digital interventions emerge from rigorous research and responsible development to deliver measurable benefit to underserved communities and adaptively, affordably scale across global social, economic and environmental complexity for sustainable impact.
PUBLIC HEALTH
Scaling parenting support to prevent child sexual abuse, exploitation and violence
Our multiyear collaboration with the University of Oxford’s Global Parenting Initiative and UNICEF-supported Parenting for Lifelong Health is leading to proven digital interventions that are reducing violence against children and intimate partner violence, as well as improving parenting, mental health and well-being.
Learn more about our Parenting Collaboratory
AGROECOLOGY
Farmer-owned tech, farmer-led research, farmer-serving data
On-the-ground work with farmers and farmer federations is leading to more sustainable food systems managed by local communities
Learn more about agroecology innovation
CLIMATE
Making sense of historical climate data to help predict the future
Our work with the World Meteorological Organization and regional African Met Services Offices is turning decades of historical climate data into actionable projections about climate change and its effects on local weather.
Learn more about climate innovation
EDUCATION
Giving meaningful maths feedback to improve student learning
IDEMS is the impact commercialization partner to open-source mathematics assessment platform STACK. Our team is helping build and expand STACK’s product and question banks, and leading the integration of STACK into university-level teaching and learning in Europe and Africa. We’re currently piloting STACK in the US with Caltech.
Learn how STACK is improving maths education
Collaborative partners:
Collaborative impact R&D partnerships
IDEMS’ team of PhD mathematical scientists, social scientists, and applied technologists is a long-term research-and-development partner to global experts leading impact innovation in their fields.
Professor Lucie Cluver
Professor of Child and Family Social Work,
Department of Social Policy and Intervention, University of Oxford, and
Advocate Lead, Global Parenting Initiative
“For our global-scale project, IDEMS co-designs interventions using human-centred design approaches, whilst recognising the limitations of this methodology, and dealing effectively and efficiently with the complexity associated with our applied research into ‘accelerators’ – factors which combine to achieve multiple SDGs simultaneously.
This conceptual versatility and methodological flexibility provide essential reinforcement in maintaining the integrity of our evidence-base alongside promoting its universal accessibility.
IDEMS is an outstanding example of real-world impact through partnership expertise and endeavour – at the cutting edge of technology and on the frontlines of crisis.”
High-impact innovation from low-resource contexts
Working in low-resource environments for digital inclusion of underserved communities and users leads our team to unexpected and original innovation on everything from large scale public-good digital infrastructure to open-source impact tech products.
Learn more about IDEMS innovation
Democratising data science: R-Instat
R-Instat’s open-source software emerged from the need to make data analysis and modeling easily available to non-data scientists. By allowing regional African Meteorological Services Offices to make sense of current and historical weather data, R-Instat is transforming the region’s ability to understand and address climate change.
Learn more about how R-Instat makes data science accessible to everyone
Pioneering maths-based digital infrastructure R&D
Technology for social impact requires complex underlying digital infrastructure for localized versioning and adaptation—all within a system that allows for hierarchies of knowledge and ownership, as well as open collaboration. IDEMS is collaborating with Berkeley, California- and Oxford-based Topos Institute, a mathematics research organization, to test and develop the maths-based architecture to enable complex digital deployments in social complexity.
Local capacity building
We develop early mathematical talent and help exceptionally talented career mathematical scientists develop toward careers in social impact innovation in low-resource environments around the world.
Learn about the Capacity Building principle
that underpins IDEMS
Developing Next-Gen Talent with Maths Camps
IDEMS Director David Stern founded the first maths camp in Kisumu, Kenya in 2011. In the week-long camps, students participate in activities from hands-on computer-based investigations to problem-solving sessions. They learn mathematics beyond their curriculum, such as game theory, spherical geometry, mathematical modeling and number theory through talks, discussions, games, activities and computer software. In 2020, in response to Covid, IDEMS developed maths camps materials into a technological ecosystem, with the card deck, booklet, website and a chatbot all part of a common authoring system.
Buy IDEMS maths cards,
support students in Africa
INNODEMS: The African team setting the standard for regional social impact innovation R&D
Founded by Zach Mbasu, a data scientist and former maths educator, the INNODEMS office is based in Kakamega, Kenya. Its team of African PhD mathematical scientists, researchers, and developers work throughout Western Africa. The INNODEMS team leads collaborations with local organisations and communities, ensuring responsible digital application development and localisation for measurable impact.
Learn more about INNODEMS
LISTEN: THE IDEMS PODCAST
IDEMS Co-Founding Director David Stern interviews INNODEMS Founder Zach Mbasu
A pathway to purpose
IDEMS develops talented mathematical scientists seeking purpose-driven careers – and offers a professional alternative to traditional careers in academia or mainstream profit-centric technology companies.
POSTDOCTORAL IMPACT ACTIVATION FELLOWSHIPS
A two-year fellowship developing postdoctoral academics for careers in impact innovation
Since 2020, IDEMS has supported more than a dozen two-year postdoctoral fellowships. International postdocs gain valuable expertise and experience, produce original research, and develop an understanding of the many unsolved problems in underserved areas. Postdocs from low-resource contexts gain the freedom to pursue impact research or the professional development needed to grow in an existing role. All work collaboratively with experts in other fields.
George Simmons
PhD in Mathematics
Gaining new skills in biological pest & disease modelling
George has become the interface between Berkeley, California-based CASAS and the needs of local communities in Africa for CRFS, figuring out how to unlock and apply more than 30 years of research to local agroecology.
James Musyoka
PhD in Mathematics
Gaining new skills in climate services
James works in statistics education at Kenya’s Maseno University, with an interest in climate. The university granted him leave to support his professional development. He is now conducting research in climate services, learning how to deliver on projects and becoming a recognised global expert.
Lucie Hazelgrove Planel
PhD in Anthropology
Gaining new skills in agroecology and community research methods
Lucie is supporting data-based research methods for local projects with farmer organisations in Kenya. Her postdoc work led to a permanent position: She is now the Principal Investigator on a West African support grant, building local teams to offer scalable program support.
A first-of-its-kind fellowship cohort
IDEMS is bringing together 10 Africa-based and international postdoctoral researchers in a novel Agroecology Impact Activation Fellowship Cohort. Fellows will continue their own local research or for undertaking new research to support existing projects, all focused on social-impact innovation in the African context. Fellows gain new transdisciplinary research skills and develop original research for publication, with the goal of developing careers in agroecology.
The Cohort brings local and international fellows together to share experiences and knowledge–and form professional relationships, research connections, and valuable networks.
Get in touch to learn how you can support the cohort
Ambitious innovation meets public good
As a UK-based Community Interest Company, IDEMS has a mandate to be a profitable nonprofit: profits are reinvested to support the growth of our impact-serving research, development and innovation.
Learn more about the IDEMS mission and vision
THE IDEMS PRINCIPLES
Principled by design
All IDEMS work is guided by underlying organisational principles for purpose-led decision making and responsible, human-serving technologies. We’re so committed to our principles that we recorded The IDEMS Principle, an entire podcast series dedicated them.
Listen to one. Listen to them all.