The grant for $1.35 million was awarded to University of Washington’s Gaetano Borriello and Deborah Estrin of UCLA. He’s a professor at UW with interests in ubiquitous computing, specifically: locatation-aware computing, sensor-based activities and mobile computing and she’s the director of the Center for Embedded Networked Sensing (CENS) at UCLA and a professor of computer science.

Of the awards distributed to 31 professors at 10 universities conducting 12 projects, the one that stands out most to me is the project named “use of mobile phones as data collection devices for public health and environment monitoring” by Gaetano Borriello, University of Washington and Deborah Estrin, UCLA.

The three-year grant includes a $900,000 up front pay-out and $450,000 per year after, Google’s own engineer will be working directly with the professors on the Data Collection from Mobile Devices project.

$5.7 million in grants called Focused Research Awards, are being given to lead research into four areas: machine learning, the use of mobile phones as data collection devices for public health and environment monitoring, energy efficiency in computing, and privacy.