September-October Newsletter |
Hello Broadcast,
What’s cookin’ DSAIL Mailers? It has been quite some time since we penned something down, but not to worry our silence has been for a good cause, or should we say good causes. We have been working round the clock to solve real-world problems. What are they, you ask? Get yourself a nice cup of coffee and cosy up as you read through all the exciting adventures our team has been up to these past two months. |
Recruiting
DSAIL is Recruiting |
Are you interested in being part of the great work we do at DSAIL? DSAIL is recruiting research interns and fellows keen on applying AI to solve real-world problems and develop novel methods. We seek candidates interested in pursuing Masters and PhD degrees as well as Postdoctoral researchers. |
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Prizes and Awards
DSAIL Team Awarded Lacuna Fund Grant |
DSAIL was one of the recently announced awardees for the Lacuna Fund Climate and Forests Call. DSAIL’s director joined other awardees in New York in September for the Grantee Convening that brought together grantees from all over the world collecting datasets to help us respond to the climate crisis.
The DSAIL team will collect a high-resolution dataset of drone imagery, ground truth tree parameter measurements, and aggregate weather data from a large, reforested area in Kieni Forest in Kenya. These data will enable the development of tools that can rapidly assess the success of reforestation efforts by enabling the counting of trees, estimation of trees’ biophysical parameters from drone images, and prediction of tree growth in relation to tree species and weather variables.
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Prizes and Awards
PhysioNet Challenge |
Prizes and Awards
IEEE YESIST12 2024 |
Victoria recently participated in the IEEE YESIST12 2024 finale competition, where her project won first place in the special track category. A big congratulations to her on this remarkable achievement! |
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Upcoming Event
Two Abstracts Accepted to AGU |
We are pleased to announce that two abstracts by DSAIL researchers have been accepted for the American Geophysical Union (AGU) Fall Meeting 2024. The abstracts, titled “Using Drone Imagery and Deep Learning to Monitor a Reforested Stand in Kenya” by Cedric and Mbatia, and “Do Low Cost Weather Stations Complement Large Scale Numerical Weather Prediction Models?” by Austin, Teofilo and a team from Oregon State University, will be presented as posters by Cedric and Austin in Washington, D.C., in December 2024 It is an honour to have our research presented at such a prestigious platform.
We also extend our congratulations to Austin for being awarded the Berkner Lloyd Travel Fellowship, recognising the scientific merit of his submission. We wish Cedric and Austin the very best as they present their research on this global stage. |
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Conferences and Workshops
AI+X summit |
Prof. Ciira Maina delivered a Keynote address titled “Translating AI's Promise to Solutions in Africa” on 3rd October 2024 at the AI+X summit in Zurich, Switzerland. The summit is one of the premier AI events in Switzerland and brought together several presenters from industry and academia. |
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Conferences and Workshops
Deep Learning Indaba 2024 |
Victoria, one of our own, recently attended this year’s Deep Learning Indaba where she presented her poster on enhancing mobility for individuals with Cerebral Palsy while Austin represented our team with a spotlight presentation at the Weakly Supervised Computer Vision Workshop, discussing his ongoing research on animal pose estimation.
The theme of this year’s Indaba, ‘ ‘Xam Xamle’ meaning 'arm yourself with knowledge and share it', is a perfect reminder to pass on valuable insights. Speaking of which, did you know about Google’s new tool, Notebook LM(not an ad)? This product lets you upload notes or recordings and then generates summaries, making it easy to ask questions about the content. We hope students find this tool helpful for managing and digesting large amounts of information!
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Conferences and Workshops
ICRA@40 Satellite Event |
Cedric Kiplimo and Austin Kaburia attended the International Conference on Robotics and Automation 40-year celebrations (ICRA@40 Africa) at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) in South Africa. The event took place between 24th and 26th September 2024. It featured keynotes, research presentations from various academic institutions and research organisations, as well as visits to fun places around Johannesburg.
Austin gave a talk while Cedric made a poster presentation. We are so delighted to have been a part of the ICRA@40 celebrations satellite event held at Wits! |
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Conferences and Workshops
African-Next-Voices Data Collection Workshop |
Last month, Mary from DSAIL was among the University’s team members who attended a data collection workshop for the African Next Voices project, held in Kisumu. The Kikuyu language group was represented by both Dedan Kimathi University of Technology and the Local Development Research Institute (LDRI). The project aims to establish a corpus of text and voice data for five Kenyan languages Dholuo, Gikuyu, Somali, Kalenjin (Nandi/Kipsigis dialects), and Maasai. This dataset will support the development of language-based technologies, such as translation tools, speech recognition and digital assistants. |
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Conferences and Workshops
Image Annotation & Drone Image Processing Workshop |
As part of our capacity-building endeavours at DSAIL, we held an image annotation and drone image processing workshop at DeKUT from 22 to 25 October 2024. This workshop was funded by the Lacuna Fund as part of our forest monitoring research project at Kieni Forest.
During the workshop, members of the growing DSAIL team were trained on how to process drone images using various software tools such as ArcGIS Pro and WebODM. This part of the training was conducted by Mr. Dennis Gitundu from the Institute of Geomatics, GIS, and Remote Sensing (IGGReS). DSAIL collaborates with faculty and other staff from IGGReS in our environmental monitoring research projects to benefit from and leverage their expertise in remote sensing.
The image annotation aspect of the training was done by Yuri Njathi, Victor Ruto, Lorna Mugambi, Samuel Mbatia, and Cedric Kiplimo who are all researchers at DSAIL. We are delighted that our recently onboarded team members of 11 new undergraduate research assistants and 6 attaches, among others have been equipped with skills they will need in their day-to-day work at DSAIL. |
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Publications
Data Science Education for Africa |
We are excited to announce the publication of our workshop report titled "The DSAIL-GeJuSTA Data Science Education Workshop: Designing a Data Science Curriculum for the African Continent." This report is the result of a collaborative effort between the DSAIL and Gender Justice in STEM Research in Africa (GeJUSTA).
The workshop took place during the 7th DeKUT International Conference and brought together a diverse group of participants. Together, we explored strategies for creating data science curricula, promoting gender equity in data science education, and addressing emerging technological challenges.
Read the full paper here. |
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Fieldwork
Aga Khan University Hospital visit |
At DSAIL, we work closely with specialists to design impactful solutions that meet the pressing needs of our communities. In collaboration with the Orthopaedic Department at Aga Khan University Hospital, we are developing an AI-driven tool called DSAIL Orthopedia, aimed at improving the assessment of lower limb alignment.
Traditionally, X-rays are used to capture the images required to measure Hip-Knee-Ankle (HKA) angles for evaluating limb alignment, though repeated exposure carries health risks. DSAIL Orthopedia provides a computer vision alternative, significantly reducing the reliance on X-rays. Recently, Clinton and Prof Ciira visited Aga Khan University Hospital to coordinate data collection to validate this technology, working together to offer a safer and more efficient orthopaedic assessment method.
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Spotlight
Antony’s farewell to UCT AIMS |
Antony Gitau
Congratulations Antony on winning a Google DeepMind Scholarship and starting your Master’s in Mathematical Science specialising in Artificial Intelligence for Science at the University of Cape Town and AIMS South Africa! |
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If you are reading this then a big congratulations to you because you have just bumped into our hot new section where we will give you a song recommendation every newsletter. A song you can add to your playlist this week is Hot To Go by Chappell Roan. Nothing like training a model while listening to Chappell Roan.
However, if you are looking for a slower vibe then Matt Ngesa is who you want to be listening to. Check out Twende Kazi by him. Stay tuned for our next feature on Jam Cam, which will be a classic Chritsmas Carol. You do not want to miss that! |
It was great catching up, let us do this again just before the year ends. If you would like to stay updated on what we do you can find us on our socials.
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