CV

Last updated: 23 July 2024

Education

PhD, Computer Science

University of Cape Town
🇿🇦
2021 - Present

Thesis title: “A Hybrid AI Framework for Data Fusion, Situation Analysis, and Decision Support towards Precision Health”

Supervisor: Deshen Moodley

MSc, Advanced Computer Science

University of Manchester
🇬🇧
2018 - 2019

Degree classification: Disctinction

Dissertation title: “Hello, Goodbye: Training Social Robots to Manage Interactions with Humans”

Supervisor: Angelo Cangelosi

BSc, Informatics

Strathmore University
🇰🇪
2012 - 2016

Degree classification: Upper Second Class Honours

Work Experience

Research Assistant (part-time), Adaptive and Cognitive Systems (ACS) Lab and AI Research Unit (AIRU) (2023 - Present)

• Consolidate and document codebases, datasets, and other research outputs from the ACS lab.
• Contribute to tutorials for technologies, libraries, and frameworks used in the ACS lab.
• Represent the ACS lab and AIRU in collaborative projects and speaking engagements, for instance at the Showcasing UCT event in May 2024.

Teaching Assistant, Data Science (part-time), iXperience (2021 - 2022)

• Contributed to curriculum development, assisted in delivering lectures, and held office hours.
• Consolidating and documenting codebases, datasets, and other research outputs.
• Managed student internship projects with South Africa-based companies.

Senior Technology Consultant, EY (2019 - 2021)

• Executed end-to-end client engagements, including research, analysis, proposal development and implementation of emerging technologies in different organisations across a variety of sectors.
• Led data analytics team in client engagement involving financial data from the 2018/2019 financial year collected from 220 government facilities across 25 counties in Kenya.

Software Engineer, Andela (2016 - 2018)

• Built web apps and RESTful APIs. Primarily focused on back-end development using Python, including Flask and Django.
• Guided and mentored more than 50 developers by serving as a Technical Team Lead for simulated projects, as well as a Learning Facilitator for programming bootcamps.
• Engaged in remote and culturally diverse teams with team members distributed across Africa (Kenya, Nigeria, Uganda) and the US.
• Invited to speak at multiple technology conferences, including the 2017 Propelify Innovation Festival in Hoboken, NJ, and the 2017 ASU+GSV Summit in Salt Lake City, UT.

Publications

Full list here.

Honours and Awards

• CIFAR Inclusive AI Scholarship (2024)
• Best Student Paper at the 8th International Workshop on Health Intelligence (2024)
• Mawazo Fellowship (2023 - 2024)
• Hasso Plattner Institute (HPI) Fellowship (2021 - 2025)
• Generation Google Scholarship (Europe, Middle East, and Africa) (2022)
• Centre for Artificial Intelligence Research (CAIR) Scholarship (2021)
• Grace Hopper Celebration Student Scholarship (2019)
• Chevening Scholarship (2018 - 2019)

Selected Conferences, Workshops, and Events

• 38th AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) (2024)
• Extended abstract and poster presentations at the Doctoral Consortium | Vancouver, Canada
• 8th International Workshop on Health Intelligence (W3PHIAI), held in conjuction with AAAI (2024)
• Paper presentation | Vancouver, Canada
• 32nd International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI) (2023)
• Poster presentation | Macao, S.A.R
• Co-design workshop, Climate-Sensitive Infectious Disease (CSID) Open Source Software Community of Practice (2023)
• Participant, contributing my expertise on AI and open-source software | Cape Town, South Africa
• Hasso Plattner Institute (HPI) Research Symposium (2023)
• Stage and poster presentations | Potsdam, Germany
• Southern African Conference for Artificial Intelligence Research (SACAIR) (2022)
• Poster presentation | Stellenbosch, South Africa
• Deep Learning Indaba (2022)
• Poster presentation | Tunis, Tunisia
• 8th International Conference on ICT for Ageing Well and e-Health (ICT4AWE) (2022)
• Paper presentation | Virtual
• Oxford Machine Learning Summer School (OxML) (2021)
• Participant | Virtual
• Grace Hopper Celebration (GHC) (2019)
• Participant | Orlando, Florida

Service, Volunteering, and Outreach

• Professional development mentor, scholarship application mentor, and alumni mentor, KamiLimu (2020 - Present)
• Selection panel member, Event Fund Cohort #4, Code for Science and Society (2023 - 2024)
• Application and short paper reviewer, Deep Learning Indaba (2023)
• Judge, Responsible Computer Science Challenge Kenya, Mozilla Foundation (2023)
• Paper reviewer (Shadow PC), ACM Conference on Computing and Sustainable Societies (COMPASS) (2021)
• Co-organiser and coach, Django Girls Nairobi, Mombasa, and Manchester (2016 - 2019)
• Contributor (programming tutorials), RealPython.com (2018)
• Contributor (programming tutorials), Scotch.io (since acquired by DigitalOcean) (2016 - 2017)
• Coach, Technovation (2016)

Academic Teaching and Supervision

Teaching Assistant, Department of Computer Science, University of Cape Town (2022 - 2024)
I assisted in teaching first-year Python programming courses in the department (CSC1010H and CSC1011H). This involved managing practical lab sessions and exercises; leading a team of senior undergraduate tutors to provide support to students; and invigilating and marking quizzes, tests, and exams.

Honours Project Co-supervisor, Department of Computer Science, University of Cape Town (2022)
I co-supervised a team of honours (fourth-year) students as part of the year-long CSC4002W (Computer Science Honours Project) course. The project was titled “Deep Learning Algorithms in the Detection of Cardiovascular Diseases using Electrocardiogram Data”.