Trouble viewing this email? View in browser July-August Newsletter Hello Broadcast,  DSAIL MAIL here! It’s the most wonderful time of the year! Well, almost, 3 months out at least. However, let that not dampen your mood because we have some wonderful wonderful updates of how we have spent July and August. So,  shall we? Shoutout Featured by DW We have been featured by Deutsche Welle (DW) showcasing our innovative low-cost solutions for ecosystem monitoring. Watch Gabriel Kiarie and Kabi Jason in action with our acoustic sensor, designed for efficient ecosystem monitoring. Also, see Cedric Kiplimo demonstrate the DSAIL TreeVision, a stereoscopic camera that measures key tree parameters like height and crown diameter. This technology aims to support conservationists like Samuel Guchu from the National Museums of Kenya.  Watch Video Conferences and Workshops ICME 2024 Earlier this year, the DSAIL team, including Austin Kaburia, Joan Kabura, Antony M. Gitau, and Prof. Ciira Maina, competed in the 2024 IEEE ICME Competition. They extended the VHR-BirdPose paper to identify keypoints for over 850 species from the Animal Kingdom dataset. This led to the creation of the PyPI package, aja-pose, which ensures reproducibility and further experimentation. The fine-tuned model achieved 93.07% accuracy on the validation set. Our work advances animal behaviour analysis, crucial for wildlife monitoring and conservation. For more details, visit the AJA-Pose webpage and explore our poster presentation at the ICME conference. Conferences and Workshops African Computer Vision Summer School (ACVSS) Lorna and Yuri were among 26 students from all over Africa who attended the inaugural  African Computer Vision Summer School from July 14th–24th, hosted by the Microsoft Research Institute in Nairobi, Kenya. The summer school covered a range of topics, including deep learning and advanced architectures for computer vision, 3D geometry and mathematical foundations, self-supervised learning and foundational vision models, scene understanding, generative models and conditional image synthesis, and ethics related to bias, fairness, and diversity. Moreover, they participated in a hackathon with Miriam Doh and Assala Benmalek, where they were awarded  Best Research Impact for their project on “Fairness and biases in AI's representation of African tourism." This recognition came with a $300 prize and mentorship. Conferences and Workshops ETNCC Conference Shedding light on AI explainability is important. The paper  “𝗜𝗺𝗽𝗮𝗰𝘁 𝗼𝗳 𝗕𝗮𝗰𝗸𝗴𝗿𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗱 𝗼𝗻 𝗖𝗹𝗮𝘀𝘀𝗶𝗳𝗶𝗰𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗣𝗲𝗿𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗺𝗮𝗻𝗰𝗲 𝗶𝗻 𝗖𝗮𝗺𝗲𝗿𝗮 𝗧𝗿𝗮𝗽 𝗜𝗺𝗮𝗴𝗲𝘀” aims at this. Yuri successfully presented the findings of this paper at the International Conference on Emerging Trends in Networks and Computer Communications (ETNCC) on July 24, 2024, at the Namibia University of Science and Technology. The paper includes open-source code that utilises Meta’s Segment Anything Model. A poster presentation on the paper was also presented at ACVSS. Conferences and Workshops  AGCI workshop Between July 28th and August 2nd, DSAIL’s director participated in a workshop convened by the Aspen Global Change Institute to discuss the use of AI to monitor biodiversity at a global scale. Titled “AI for Biodiversity: Overcoming Barriers to Impact”, the workshop brought together participants from all over the world and featured presentations on the use of bioacoustics, camera trapping and remote sensing for biodiversity monitoring. Conferences and Workshops Ecology and AI IndabaX Uganda Workshop Yuri and Lorna spoke at the Deep Learning IndabaX Uganda  Ecology Workshop on August 1, 2024. Their talks were titled "Pixels to Preservation: Leveraging AI for Low-cost Camera Trap Technology" and "Impact of Background on the Classification of Camera Trap Images," respectively, and were based on the camera trap research done at the lab. Visits Visit by British High Commission On the 18th of July, a team from the British High Commission visited our lab to learn more about our work. They engaged with our team, showing genuine interest in our research and the impact it could have. The team also asked us about the challenges we face, creating an open dialogue about the obstacles in our work and how we might overcome them. Their visit provided an opportunity to share our achievements and the obstacles we encountered in our field. Policy National AI strategy  Cedric and Jason, both Junior Research Fellows at DSAIL, participated in a Town Hall meeting held in Nairobi, as part of public participation in formulating Kenya’s National AI Strategy. The meeting was a critical opportunity for Kenya’s AI stakeholders drawn from the tech community, service providers, and academia to shape the future of AI in our country. Cedric and Jason gave their insights and perspectives on how AI can be harnessed to drive innovation, economic growth, and societal benefits. Fieldwork Data Collection Exercise at Kieni Forest We recently carried out a data collection exercise in a replanted section of Kieni Forest in Kiambu. The objective of the survey was to develop a comprehensive dataset of the section for downstream use in machine learning applications. The survey included collecting ground truth measurements of trees, capturing stereoscopic images using TreeVision, recording GPS coordinates of individual trees, and capturing drone images of the surveyed area. The dataset will be made publicly available once processing is completed. This exercise is part of our long-term goal of developing AI methods for reliable monitoring of forests at scale. Spotlight Antony’s graduation Antony Gitau Antony, a Data Science Africa Research Fellow, hosted at DSAIL graduated with a BSc. Biomedical Engineering from Kenyatta University, Nairobi, Kenya, in July 2024. Gabriel Kiarie (far left), Junior Research Fellow at DSAIL, Victor Ruto (far right), DSAIL intern and Jean Wanjira, Attache, Centre for Robotics and Biomedical Engineering, DeKUT join Antony in a thanksgiving ceremony in Olkalou, Nyandarua county. You see, just as we promised, wonderful wonderful times from the team here. We hope to write to you soon dearest reader. Did you enjoy the read? 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