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January - March Newsletter

What does it take to turn bold ideas into real-world impact? In this edition, we take you through our latest breakthroughs, collaborations, and adventures. Enjoy!

AGU25

Cedric Kiplimo, a junior research fellow at our lab, showcased a poster at the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting 2025 (AGU25) in New Orleans, Louisiana. Titled “Miti360: An Integrated Dataset Combining Remote Sensing, Ground Measurements and Weather Data for Improved Reforestation Monitoring”, it offered an insightful overview of our Miti360 dataset—three years in the making through careful data collection, curation, and experimentation.

This marked DSAIL’s second appearance at AGU, underscoring our ongoing commitment to pioneering AI research in forest monitoring. As the world’s largest earth and space science conference, AGU25 draws over 25,000 scientists annually to share groundbreaking advances. We are incredibly honored to have our work featured on such an influential global stage.

New Team Members

We are glad to have welcomed Mercy Melody, Bethwel Rotich, Hilda Muthoni and Felix Muruti as research interns at our lab. Their contribution to the ongoing research continues to build on our synergistic and multidisciplinary approach to solving real-world problems.

We have also been joined by Annastacia Ndunge, Daisy Chepchirchir, Peter Mwiti, Brian Waweru, Mark Denis, Daisy Munga and Odari Charles as attachees working on diverse projects. Jointly, the team’s contributions play a vital role in driving our research efforts forward.

ICTC26

Austin Kaburia, a research intern at our lab, was invited to demonstrate his work at the inaugural International Conservation Technology Conference (ICTC) in Lima, Peru, in two sessions:

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Unlocking Innovation From the Ground Up: Exploring grassroots funding pathways in conservation technology under WILDLABS.

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Running Conservation Technology Efficiently: A technical showcase on running models from Edge to Cloud on Arm architecture.

Kieni forest data collection exercise

During the months of February and March 2026, a team from DSAIL and the Institute of Geomatics, GIS & Remote Sensing (IGGReS) successfully completed an extensive data collection exercise in Kieni Forest. Over two separate trips in February and March, we captured high-resolution drone imagery alongside terrestrial stereo and single-frame photos of sections of the forest. We also recorded the precise physical measurements, including tree heights, crown and basal diameters, and exact GPS coordinates for every sampled tree. By the end of the exercise, we had documented 615 individual tree samples across 41 diverse sample plots, which builds up on our Miti360 dataset that is instrumental in advancing our forest monitoring and conservation efforts.

AI4D Storytelling Writeshop

From February 23rd to 27th, Braxton Mandara attended the AI4D storytelling writeshop convened by NIYEL and supported by International Development Research Centre (IDRC) and Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) in Dakar, Senegal. The writeshop brought together communication officers from various AI4D projects in Africa and Asia. During the workshop, the focus was on identifying and narrating clearer, and more human-centred stories from the various research labs and organizations represented.

The writeshop created a collaborative space to strengthen how research stories are told. Discussions and activities focused on crafting compelling stories that highlight the real-world impact of work emerging from research labs and partner organizations.

Throughout the sessions, participants explored practical techniques for identifying compelling stories and communicating them effectively to diverse audiences. The experience also deepened understanding of storytelling across multiple formats, including written pieces, short-form video, and photography.

Bioacoustics edge inferencing

As part of strengthening our communication efforts with our audience, we are using engaging, real-world demonstrations to bring our work to life. Biodiversity loss remains a critical global challenge, driven by human encroachment, overexploitation, and climate change, stressing the need for more effective ecosystem monitoring.

In this video, we showcase how locally developed technology at DSAIL uses edge inferencing on bird sounds to support real-time ecosystem monitoring.

Watch the full video here

Makerere AI lab collaboration visit

As part of the collaboration efforts amongst the AI4D network of labs, Khadija Athman from the Makerere AI lab paid a visit. During her stay, she had the opportunity to know more about our approach towards edge deployment and knowledge distillation. This knowledge sharing opportunity has proven instrumental in taking her research to the next level. Looking forward to what will come out of this.

Visits

During these months, we’ve had the pleasure of hosting a number of visitors including:

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Prof. John Selker from TAHMO who provided constructive feedback on the work we do on AI4Weather.

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Dr. Dorothee Weyler, Director of DAAD Kenya, accompanied by a delegation from the DAAD headquarters in Boon, Germany and the Federal MInistry of Research, Technology and Space (BMFTR) visited us to know more about the projects that we do at our centre.

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Students from the IEEE DeKUT Student Branch who were interested in the different projects at our lab.

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Gilbert Mwangi from TAHMO visited us to learn more about the work we do.

Dedan Kimathi University of Technology - Nyeri, Kenya

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