About

  300+ attendees -

connect with other researchers and practitioners

  50+ speakers

attend a showcase of cutting-edge research and applied AI

  4+ tutorials

receive a practical introduction to machine learning for beginners

  30+ posters

share your work and get feedback from experts

  2+ hackathon problems

get your hands dirty and learn from the best with Zindi and Fruitpunch AI

  Demographics

🎤 AI FEST 2023 🖼️

We cordially invite researchers, industry professionals, and students to celebrate the phenomenal achievements in Machine Learning within our vibrant South African Machine learning community.

🎉 Event Highlights

• Poster Sessions: Students are invited to showcase their ongoing projects. Even if your work is not yet complete, this is a fantastic opportunity to gain valuable insights and advice.

• Company Exhibitions: Companies are encouraged to exhibit their state-of-the-art ML projects and achievements.

• Research Showcases: We invite innovative labs and research groups to showcase their cutting-edge work in the field.

• Student Bonus: Stand a chance to win exciting prizes 🏆 with your innovative projects! (Only for Students)

Showcasing the best of South African AI

• NITheCS
• InstaDeep
• IBM
• SAAIA
• ByteFuse
• Advance Africa
• Sybrin
• Spatialedge
• Botlhale
• Teraflow
• African Robotics Unit
• Language and Speech Lab

Schedule

Day 0

  Tue 11 Jul 2023

 08h00 - 13h00

Arrivals

 13h00 - 15h30

Registration

Kramer Building LT1-3 on Middle Campus, University of Cape Town, South Africa.

Day 1

  Wed 12 Jul 2023

 08h00 - 08h30

☕ & Registration

Morning coffee/tea and late registration

 08h30 - 09h00

Opening Remarks

Deep Learning Indaba𝕏 South Africa 2023 organising committee

 09h00 - 10h00

Keynote I 1 number of speakers

Opening talk

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Paul Amayo

Paul Amayo - Building Intelligence for Robotics In Africa

Talk description

In this talk, I will speak about Building Intelligence For Robotics with a specific focus on African robotics and how this can unlock productivity in various different sector.

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Speaker bio

I am a researcher and technology enthusiast with broad experience in both hardware and software development over various sectors (from self-driving cars in the UK to para-transit in Kenya) with a primary focus on robotics. I strongly believe that technology holds the key to solving some of the world’s and in particular Africa’s most pressing problems. My interests are therefore not only in advancement of technology through research but also in its subsequent education that ensures that this technology is adopted into communities where it would be do the most good. I am currently a Senior Lecturer and Prinicipal Investigator at the University of Cape Town

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University of Cape Town

Building Intelligence for Robotics In Africa

Robotics

 10h00 - 10h25

☕

Break

 10h30 - 12h00

Machine Learning - Foundations I 1 number of speakers

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Daniel Nico Wilke

Daniel Nico Wilke - Decoding Data Science to Encode Concepts

Talk description

A fundamental talk that highlights some of the foundational concepts that underpin data science, statistical learning, machine learning, and deep learning.

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Speaker bio

Professor in Mechanical and Aeronautical Engineering at the University of Pretoria, South Africa. Current President of the South African Association for Theoretical and Applied Mechanics, and Chairman of the International Union of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics (IUTAM) National Committee.

Colloquially known as that Gradient-Only Optimization Guy with a published Springer book Practical Mathematical Optimization, co-authored with the late Prof Jan Snyman. Optimization is my Passion, generative modeling my application, and Nvidia GPUs my calculator.

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University of Pretoria

Decoding Data Science to Encode Concepts

Research I 3 number of speakers

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Aurona Gerber

Aurona Gerber - The Digital-first World

Talk description

We are increasingly living in a world that is characterised by the merger and fusing of the digital and physical realms. ChatGPTs recent massive adoption attests to this. Exactly what this merged reality entails is not clear yet, but there is agreement that almost all aspects of our lives are being affected, either directly or indirectly. Recently some notable Computing scholars described the digital-first observation, which is formally defined as an ontological reversal of the digital and physical worlds [1, 2]. More simply described it is the observation that the physical world preceded the digital world before, but we now observe that the digital world precedes (and often prescribes) the physical world. Anybody that traveled recently would have noticed that our biometric-enhanced virtual identity now precedes any physical document - a physical passport is only used for verification and not primarily for identification.  Several more examples of this digital-first reversal can be observed daily if we care to take notice, including that some of the key objects necessary for learning such as books, music, and videos, now exist primarily and firstly in the digital world before they are being realized into physical existence, and then only when it is necessary for human interaction. This presentation will firstly explore the characteristics of digital objects that inevitably resulted in the digital-first world, followed by a discussion of what digital-first means for us. Lastly, some implications and guidelines are proposed for digital literacy living in this new digital-first world.

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Speaker bio

Prof Aurona Gerber is an associate professor in the Department of Computer Science in the Natural Sciences faculty at the University of the Western Cape. She is also a group leader of the Centre for AI (CAIR) Research Group in Applied AI. She has published more than 70 accredited publications with co-authors in the key areas of her research that is in various aspects data science and AI, including disruption, ontology engineering, enterprise architecture, and design science research (DSR). She supervised more than 20 masters and doctoral students to completion of their degrees. She is a NRF C1 rated researcher. She is the current past president of SAICSIT, on the steering committee of AISSAC, the SA chapter of the Association of Information Systems (AIS) and SACAIR, the Southern African Conference for AI Research. She is also president of the AIS SIGODIS, the Special Interest Group in Intelligent IS Systems

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University of the Western Cape

The Digital-first World

AI Ethics

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Isaac Itumeleng Setshedi

Isaac Itumeleng Setshedi - Unveiling hidden parameters: Transforming the classic solve for X problem to data driven interpretable latent parameters

Talk description

A data-driven approach that leverages latent parameters to simplify the analysis and interpretation of complex data. We showcase the potential of data-driven machine learning and latent parameters in simplifying complex problems and enhancing interpretability. By leveraging the latent space, we enable a more comprehensive analysis of data.

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Speaker bio

I work as a lecturer at the University of Pretoria (UP). My research interests are in the field of machine learning and guided waves ultrasonics. I am currently in the final stages of my Doctoral studies in the field of artificial intelligence/deep learning, finite element analysis, ultrasonics and rail monitoring.

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University of Pretoria

Unveiling hidden parameters: Transforming the classic solve for X problem to data driven interpretable latent parameters

Data Science

Deshen Moodley

Centre for AI Research, University of Cape Town

Embracing Human-Centred Artificial Intelligence: The rise of Augmented AI systems

Industry I 3 number of speakers

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Jacques Ludik

Jacques Ludik - Pushing AI innovation to develop trustworthy explainable AI, AGI and autonomous Intelligent Agents in a Decentralized World

Talk description

Pushing AI innovation to develop trustworthy explainable AI, AGI and autonomous Intelligent Agents in a Decentralized World

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Speaker bio

Dr Jacques Ludik is a Smart Technology Entrepreneur, PhD in AI, Founder of multiple AI companies, Author, International keynote speaker, Global AI Ambassador and award-winning AI Leader with a 25+ years’ experience in AI, Machine Learning & Data Science and its applications around the globe. One of his companies, CSense Systems, was Africa’s first AI company that was sold to a multi-national, General Electric, in 2011. Dr Ludik is the author of ‘Democratizing Artificial Intelligence to Benefit Everyone: Shaping a Better Future in the Smart Technology Era’ and ‘Neural Networks and Psychopathology’. He has also introduced an MTP for humanity and its associated goals to help shape a beneficial human-centric future and founded Sapiens.Network as a decentralized, human-centric, user-controlled AI-driven super platform. He is currently involved in sustainable technology venture capital and building AI-based companies with data rich platforms that leverages AI technologies to unlock business, customer and societal value at scale. Dr Ludik is the Founder & CEO of Cortex Group and Cortex Logic, Vive Teen Wellness, Journey Wellness; and Founder & President of the Machine Intelligence Institute of Africa (MIIA) focused on transforming Africa through AI. He was also previously an Executive at Jumo and General Electric as well as an Academic at Stellenbosch University. Dr Ludik currently also serves on the Advisory Boards of Cirrus, Data Science Nigeria, AICE in Kenya, and Verchool and member of the AI Africa Consortium, and is a Swiss Cognitive Global AI Ambassador.

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Machine Intelligence Institute of Africa (MIIA), Cortex Logic

Pushing AI innovation to develop trustworthy explainable AI, AGI and autonomous Intelligent Agents in a Decentralized World

Explainable AI

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Gemma Dawson & Stephanie Müller

Gemma Dawson & Stephanie Müller - IBM Quantum Research in Healthcare

Talk description

There is far more to IBM than servers and networking, and this talk will cover some of the local projects and ventures that are happening at IBM Research & IBM Quantum. If you are keen to discover what opportunities or potential research collaborations are possible, then join us for our talk.In this part of the talk, Stephanie will touch on the numerous opportunities available at IBM Research, the domains for which we develop technology solutions, including Healthcare, Quantum, AI and Foundation Models. Quantum computing may sound intimidating to some, but, if you have some linear algebra along with a good dose of curiosity in your back pocket, then you are ready to entangle some qubits. Gemma will guide you to resources, events, certifications, and community projects to help you get started in this thrilling field.

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Speaker bio

Gemma

With degrees in Statistics, Applied Mathematics, and Operations Research, Gemma is a programme manager for two IBM Quantum global programmes (Qiskit Advocates and the Qiskit Developer Certification). The first ten years of her career was spent in education before changing to a career in tech where she worked in a number of different roles. What remained consistent was a passion for community building and that is what brought her to IBM Quantum and the rapidly growing field of quantum computing.

Stephanie

With degrees spanning human biology, bioinformatics, and genetics, Stephanie has always had a passion for finding solutions for healthcare problems plaguing our communities. As the Technical Lead for Healthcare and Life Sciences Research at IBM Research in Johannesburg, Stephanie leads a diverse team of individuals specialising in machine learning, AI, mathematics and quantum chemistry.

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IBM Quantum

IBM Quantum Research in Healthcare

Quantum Computing Healthcare

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Gabi Immelman

Gabi Immelman - Minds and Machines: The most powerful technology in the classroom?

Talk description

Education isn’t a transaction, it’s a process driven by creativity, curiosity, and connection. In a world where our children will grow up as AI natives, a new ally emerges in the quest for effective learning and boundless curiosity - artificial intelligence (AI). What does the future hold for our learners, teachers and schools?

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Speaker bio

Gabi Immelman is the founder and CEO of edtech start-up and social learning platform Mindjoy. A former Reggio-educator turned EdTech founder with experience working globally in Africa & USA. Mindjoy is unleashing curiosity by building an OS for boundless classroom learning powered by AI. We’re starting by helping educators transform lessons they love and know and turn them into tech projects beyond their imaginations. Mindjoy is the third company she has founded - her first being a stick-on tattoo parlour at the beach where we use to go for summer vacation when I was a child.

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Mindjoy

Minds and Machines: The most powerful technology in the classroom?

Education

 12h00 - 13h00

🍽️

Lunch Break

 13h00 - 14h00

Keynote II 1 number of speakers

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Kshitij Thorat

Kshitij Thorat - Translating astronomical Big Data into patterns of discovery

Talk description

I’ll discuss the forthcoming revolution in radio astronomy powered by new-generation radio telescopes like the South African MeerKAT and the Australian ASKAP facilities. The massively increased data rates make Machine Learning techniques an ideal tool to tackle radio astronomical data. As a prime example, I’ll talk about the problem of astronomical source detection and classification.

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Speaker bio

Kshitij Thorat is a radio astronomer and has worked as a senior lecturer at the University of Pretoria. He finished his doctoral work at the Indian Institute of Science in 2014, after which he has been based in South Africa. His research interests revolve around extra-galactic radio sources: their life-cycles, morphology and their impact on their surroundings. With the advent of the Big Data paradigm in radio astronomy, Kshitij has focused on techniques to help process and analyse data better, including development of fully automated data reduction pipelines and machine learning techniques to classify radio galaxies.

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University of Pretoria

Translating astronomical Big Data into patterns of discovery

Astronomy

 14h00 - 14h30

☕

Break (coffee only) (Speaker intros start at 2:25pm)

 14h30 - 16h00

Transformers - Foundations II 1 number of speakers

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Ruan van der Merwe

Ruan van der Merwe - Paying Attention to Transformers: A Deep Dive into Transformer Networks

Talk description

In this in-depth introduction to the Transformer architecture, we will be exploring attention and its crucial role within Transformers. From there, we will dive into the essential aspects necessary to truly understand how a Transformer processes various types of data, going beyond just text. Furthermore, we will touch upon the exciting future developments and possibilities of Transformers. In addition, we’ll take a closer look at how ChatGPT works, providing you with a comprehensive understanding of this current phenomenon.

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Speaker bio

I am co-founder and technical lead at ByteFuse, and I have an unhealthy obsession with cats and llamas.

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ByteFuse

Paying Attention to Transformers: A Deep Dive into Transformer Networks

Transformers Language

ML, GANs, Vision - Research II 3 number of speakers

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St John Grimbly

St John Grimbly - Intro to Causality

Talk description

If you’ve ever taken a statistics class, I have little doubt you’ve heard someone say “correlation does not imply causation”. This trope seems to imply that we can never state that A causes B by analysis of data alone. This talk will take a deeper look at if this is always the case by introducing the field of causal inference, with a special focus on (graphical) causal modelling. Attendees will leave having gained knowledge of how assumptions and data come together to enable drawing causal conclusions from data. More importantly, they will develop the basic intuition and fundamental concepts of causal modelling in the context of machine learning.

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Speaker bio

St John is incoming PhD candidate at The University of Cape Town, where his research focus is in the area of reinforcement learning and learning agents. His masters thesis investigated the causal methods in the context of reinforcement learning. This led to an interest in how causality can aid in helping solve various problems faced in adaptive learning methods. He also has an academic interest in neuro-plausible methods and multi-agent scenarios, with a strong interest in the emerging field of active inference.

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University of Cape Town

Intro to Causality

Causal ML RL

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Emile-Reyn Engelbrecht

Emile-Reyn Engelbrecht - Semi-supervised learning and novelty detection using Generative Adversarial Networks

Talk description

GANs have been used for a variety of applications. In this talk I will discuss how GANs can be used for both semi-supervised learning and novelty detection in one model. Both these tasks are becoming increasingly important in research and industry, but few have synthesised GAN models to accomplish all in one. Unified machine learning is critical for the just development of Aritificial Intelligence, and this talk will discuss one such step.

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Speaker bio

PhD Candidate in Electronic Engineering at Stellenbosch University focussing on Machine Learning. My specific interest is Generative Adversarial Networks which are at the forefrunt of the 4th Industrial Revolution.

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Stellenbosch University

Semi-supervised learning and novelty detection using Generative Adversarial Networks

GANs

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Cassandra Durr

Cassandra Durr - Contrastive Learning: Fundamentals and Practical Applications

Talk description

Discover the fundamentals of contrastive learning, a technique that learns meaningful representations by contrasting similar and dissimilar samples of words, sentences, or images. In this talk, an introduction to both supervised and self-supervised contrastive learning will be provided, as well as an outline of its applications in Computer Vision, NLP, and recommender systems.

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Speaker bio

I am a Master’s student at Stellenbosch University pursuing a degree in Machine Learning and Computer Vision under Dr Willie Brink.

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Stellenbosch University

Contrastive Learning: Fundamentals and Practical Applications

Language Vision

Industry II 3 number of speakers

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Sedinam Simpson

Sedinam Simpson - Day in the Life of a Data Scientist

Talk description

Arthur C. Clarke once said, ‘Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic’. One could argue that data scientists are modern magicians… but are we really? The role of a data scientist in industry spans from understanding business context and identifying problems to solve, to thinking of meaningful metrics and explaining solutions to stakeholders. If you are a grad wondering what data science in the real world looks like, this talk is for you.

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Speaker bio

Sedinam is a data scientist in the UK AI and Data team at Investec. She graduated from the University of Cape Town with an honours in statistics and is on her way to study a masters in machine learning at the University of Cambridge.

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Investec

Day in the Life of a Data Scientist

Data Science

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Karen Viljoen

Karen Viljoen - Data plumbing 101

Talk description

Small and big data engineering lessons in industry.

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Speaker bio

Data Engineer at Teraflow.ai.

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Teraflow.ai

Data plumbing 101

Data Science

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Dineo Makoro

Dineo Makoro - How a line graph can ruin your day

Talk description

As ML models adoption continue to grow in real world applications, model explainability is becoming equally important. It is necessary for data scientist to be able to explain the models in production.

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Speaker bio

Dineo is currently a Senior Data Scientist at Vodacom Group with an understanding of machine learning and its applications across diverse industries. Driven by her passion for making a positive impact, Dineo has worked in healthcare research, banking and telecoms, leveraging data-driven solutions to drive innovation and tackle complex problems. She’s highly motivated by the prospect of transforming cutting-edge machine learning techniques into practical, scalable solutions that improve efficiency, decision-making and ultimately, the lives of the end-users.

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Vodacom Group

How a line graph can ruin your day

Explainable AI Data Science

 16h00 - 17h00

📷 Group Photo and Speed 'Dating'

 17h00 - 20h30

🎉 AI Fest / Poster Session / Opening Event

Kramer Quad

• Poster session: Everyone is invited to showcase their ongoing projects. Even if your work is not yet complete, this is a fantastic opportunity to gain valuable insights and advice.
• Company Exhibitions: Companies are encouraged to exhibit their state-of-the-art ML projects and achievements.
• Research Showcases: We invite innovative labs and research groups to showcase their cutting-edge work in the field.
• Student Bonus: Stand a chance to win exciting prizes 🏆 with your innovative projects! (Only for Students)

Sponsored by Lelapa AI and SAAIA.

Day 2

  Thu 13 Jul 2023

 08h00 - 09h00

☕

Morning coffee/tea

 09h00 - 10h00

Keynote III 1 number of speakers

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Jay van Zyl

Jay van Zyl - Human Organism as Algorithm

Talk description

Navigating the Intersection of Social Science, Algorithms, and AI-Driven Technologies: Explores the idea that human beings are essentially complex algorithms that have evolved over time. It covers the development of human intelligence and how it has been influenced by the emergence of Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies. Covering three key areas—social science’s interplay with human technology, the impact of algorithms on humans, and the role of artificial intelligence in automating human intelligence—the discussion aims to address the challenges and opportunities presented by these interactions. By understanding and addressing these concerns, we can work collaboratively to shape a future that prioritizes the well-being of humanity while driving ethical innovation.

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Speaker bio

Jay van Zyl is a founder at Ecosystem.Ai

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Ecosystem.Ai

Human Organism as Algorithm

Social Science

 10h00 - 10h30

☕

Break (Speaker Intros start at 10:25am)

 10h30 - 12h00

Computer Vision - Foundations III 1 number of speakers

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Ritesh Kanjee

Ritesh Kanjee - Mastering Modern Computer Vision Workshop: From Basics to Cutting-Edge Techniques

Talk description

Mastering Modern Computer Vision: From Basics to Cutting-Edge Techniques’ workshop provides a comprehensive exploration of core and advanced aspects of Computer Vision. The tutorial will delve into essential techniques such as object detection, segmentation, pose estimation, and text detection, all within a deep learning framework. This high-impact session aims to bridge theory with practical application, equipping attendees with the skills needed to leverage Computer Vision in solving complex real-world challenges.

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Speaker bio

Ritesh Kanjee is a seasoned AI entrepreneur, recognized educator, and the Founder of Augmented Startups, a leading platform for AI and Computer Vision learning.

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Augmented Startups(Director) -| Advisory Board Member SAAIA

Mastering Modern Computer Vision Workshop: From Basics to Cutting-Edge Techniques

Education Vision

Language - Research III 3 number of speakers

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Herman Kamper

Herman Kamper - What can large spoken language models tell us about speech?

Talk description

Tasks such as speech recognition and speech synthesis are increasingly being tackled with large spoken language models. So what is left in speech processing research? In this talk I will discuss some of the less conventional tasks that we are tackling with these language models. Our long-term goal is to try and use these models to gain a better understanding of how humans acquire language, and to improve our scientific understanding of the speech signal.

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Speaker bio

I am an Associate Professor in E&E Engineering at Stellenbosch University. Before this, I did a postdoc at TTI-Chicago. I obtained my PhD in 2017 from the University of Edinburgh. I am a researcher in machine learning with a specific focus on speech processing. My goal is to develop methods that would allow machines to understand speech without explicit supervision. Through this, I hope to better our understanding of human language acquisition and what is going on in the speech signal itself.

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Stellenbosch University

What can large spoken language models tell us about speech?

Language

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Matthew Baas

Matthew Baas - Voice conversion with just nearest neighbours

Talk description

Voice conversion aims to transform speech into a target voice with just a few example recordings of the target speaker. Recent methods produce convincing conversions, but at the cost of increased complexity – making results difficult to reproduce and build on. Instead, in this talk I will go over some of our lab’s recent research to keep voice conversion simple by using just the plain k-nearest neighbours algorithm. Despite its simplicity, our recent research is competitive with the largest and complex existing models. I’ll also show how it can be used to perform diverse combinations of conversions, such as converting cross-lingually, or between human and animal sounds.

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Speaker bio

Matthew is an Electronic Engineering PhD student in the Stellenbosch University MediaLab under Herman Kamper. His research focus is on speech synthesis and generative speech models.

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Stellenbosch University

Voice conversion with just nearest neighbours

Language

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Leanne Nortje

Leanne Nortje - Visually grounded few-shot word learning in low-resource settings

Talk description

We propose a visually grounded speech model that learns new words and their visual depictions from just a few word- image example pairs. Given a set of test images and a spoken query, we ask the model which image depicts the query word. Previous work has simplified this few-shot learning problem by either using an artificial setting with digit word-image pairs or by using a large number of examples per class. Moreover, all previous studies were performed using English speech-image data. We propose an approach that can work on natural word-image pairs but with less examples, i.e. fewer shots, and then illustrate how this approach can be applied for multimodal few-shot learning in a real low-resource language, Yoruba. Our approach involves using the given word-image example pairs to mine new unsupervised word-image training pairs from large collections of unlabelled speech and images. Additionally, we use a word-to-image attention mechanism to determine word-image similarity. With this new model, we achieve better performance with fewer shots than previous approaches on an existing English benchmark. Many of this model’s mistakes are due to relating a few-shot class with its contextual information. We apply multimodal few-shot learning, for the first time, on an actual low-resource language, Yoruba. By initialising the multimodal Yoruba few-shot model on a larger set of English speech-image data, it can outperform its purely English variant.

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Speaker bio

I am currently a DeepMind scholar and a PhD student in Electrical and Electronic Engineering at Stellenbosch University. My thesis investigates the usage of vision as a form of transcribing speech in a low-resource language. With this research we hope to also get some cognitive insights as to how children learn.

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Stellenbosch University

Visually grounded few-shot word learning in low-resource settings

Language

MLOps - Industry III 3 number of speakers

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Alta de Waal

Alta de Waal - AI use cases in BMW Group South Africa

Talk description

In this talk I will present some interesting AI use cases in the BMW Group South Africa and also discuss the transformative power of MLOps and Low Code No Code.

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Speaker bio

I am currently employed as a data scientist at the BMW Group South Africa. Before this, I was in academia in the Department of Statistics, University of Pretoria.

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BMW Group South Africa

AI use cases in BMW Group South Africa

MLOps

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Frank Ortmann

Frank Ortmann - MLOps in Enterprise

Talk description

I’ll discuss how machine learning solutions are implemented in enterprises, what the role of a machine learning engineer is, and how they leverage MLOps to be successful.

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Speaker bio

After finishing my PhD in Operations Research, I worked on projects in superconducting electronics and extremely high-frequency data capture. In 2014 I helped found the precursor to what is now Spatialedge. Currently I serve as Director and COO at Spatialedge and help various teams deliver high-value MLOps projects at various large companies.

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Spatialedge

MLOps in Enterprise

MLOps

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Shane Gregory Acton

Shane Gregory Acton - Natural Language AI is revolutionising Medical Science

Talk description

An introduction to the way that the technologies powering ChatGPT are also impacting biology and medical research. By using Ai sequence models - we can now model protein interactions, predict vaccine candidates, and even generate new medicines.

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Speaker bio

I studied NLP at UCT, and now I work for Instadeep, under BioNTech - on the development of Ai tools for Vaccine R&D.

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Instadeep

Natural Language AI is revolutionising Medical Science

Healthcare Language

 12h00 - 13h00

🍽️

Lunch Break

 13h00 - 14h00

Keynote IV 1 number of speakers

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Emma Ruttkamp-Bloem

Emma Ruttkamp-Bloem - AI and Agency

Talk description

What does it mean to speak of personal identity, autonomy, and agency in the light of the current status and exponential growth of data-driven AI technologies? Why does the question matter?

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Speaker bio

Professor Emma Ruttkamp-Bloem is a philosopher of science and technology, an AI ethics policy adviser and a machine ethics researcher.

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University of Pretoria and South African Centre for AI Research

AI and Agency

AI Ethics

 14h00 - 14h30

☕

Break (coffee only) (Speaker Intros start at 2:25pm)

 14h30 - 16h00

Inference - Foundations IV 1 number of speakers

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Jacobie Mouton

Jacobie Mouton - An Introduction to Variational Inference and its Application in Deep Learning

Talk description

Bayesian inference allows us to calculate the posterior distribution of unknown variables given observations, using Bayes’ Theorem. In practice however, it is typically the case that this posterior distribution is intractable to compute exactly. This tutorial introduces variational inference (VI) - which constructs an approximate posterior by framing the inference problem as an optimization problem. As part of this tutorial, we will consider tools such as Pyro which help simplify the application of VI and allow it to scale to large datasets and models. The tutorial concludes by considering an example application of VI in deep learning - Variational Autoencoders.

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Speaker bio

MSc graduate from Stellenbosch University, with a thesis focused on the integration of graphical knowledge in the form of Bayesian Networks into deep learning models such as Normalizing Flows and Variational Autoencoders. Currently working at Capitec Bank as a machine learning engineer.

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Stellenbosch University

An Introduction to Variational Inference and its Application in Deep Learning

Inference

Research IV 3 number of speakers

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Mervyn Christoffels

Mervyn Christoffels - CHPC: Localised Deep Learning Resources

Talk description

Introduction to the Centre for High-Performance Computing and its capabilities to accelerate Deep Learning Projects

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Speaker bio

The Centre for High Performance Computing (CHPC) is a national high performing computing facility that is funded by the Department of Science and Innovation (DSI) and administered by the CSIR.

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Centre for High Performance Computing

CHPC: Localised Deep Learning Resources

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Joseph Muthui Wacira

Joseph Muthui Wacira - Advances in Machine Learning for Renewable energy

Talk description

In this talk we will demystify how machine learning has been used to improve the efficiency and also do planning for solar energy. We will review the past and propose possible avenues for the application of machine learning in solar energy.

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Speaker bio

I am a research masters student at Stellenbosch University (Deep-mind Scholar) in the department of applied mathematics. I hold a masters in mathematical sciences from the University of the Western Cape. I did a BsC in Mathematics and Computer science in Kenyatta university, Kenya. My interests rests at the intersection of mathematics and computer science. I love working towards solving a real life problems such as in solar energy generation efficiency.

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Stellenbosch University and AIMS South Africa

Advances in Machine Learning for Renewable energy

Applied ML & Industry

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Aby Louw

Aby Louw - Text-to-speech for African languages

Talk description

The talk highlights the importance of developing text-to-speech (TTS) technologies for African languages, particularly in resource-scarce environments. It explores the challenges and potential solutions for addressing the linguistic diversity of African languages through TTS systems, ultimately aiming to bridge the digital divide and promote inclusivity in the region.

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Speaker bio

I completed my studies in electronic engineering at the University of Pretoria and immediately ventured into the field of speech technologies, specialising in text-to-speech (TTS). With over 15 years of expertise as an accomplished C developer, I have successfully executed the development of portable medium to large-scale projects. My proficiency extends to interfacing low-level C libraries with both interpreted and compiled languages. I possess hands-on experience in implementing various machine learning techniques, ranging from traditional pattern recognition to cutting-edge deep learning, in both research and commercial systems. Additionally, I have extensive knowledge in the application of digital signal processing within commercial-grade software. Throughout my career, I have effectively led small, diverse teams consisting of highly skilled researchers and developers, driving them towards shared objectives. I am the principal architect and engineer behind the Qfrency text-to-speech system, which marks a significant milestone as the first commercial-grade TTS engine capable of synthesising text in all 11 official South African languages. The successful commercialisation of the Qfrency TTS system has facilitated its widespread adoption across various sectors, both domestically and internationally. Notable fields of implementation include education, assistive technologies, call centres, and more.

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Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR)

Text-to-speech for African languages

Applied ML & Industry Language

ML Ops - Industry IV 3 number of speakers

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Keegan White

Keegan White - Smart Networks - the Power of Machine Learning Controlled Computer Networks

Talk description

In the intersection of Software-Defined Networking (SDN) and Machine Learning (ML), we’ve embraced a new paradigm for smart network management. SDN, with its unique approach of decoupling the control and data planes, enables a centrally managed system that streamlines traffic flow. But the true breakthrough emerges when we integrate this with ML. This fusion empowers our system to classify encrypted network traffic, master the complexity of expansive networks, and make intelligent, self-regulating decisions. In essence, our framework is redefining network management by combining SDN and ML, delivering improved user experience through intelligent, autonomous networks.

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Speaker bio

Keegan White has a Masters in Computer Science for UCT. He is the founder of a start-up that focuses on integrating machine learning with computer networks through the software defined networking paradigm. He is also a director of iNethi, a non-profit that aims to empower local communities to create, maintain and expand Wireless Community Networks. His expertise lie in deep learning and computer networking.

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Founder, Taurine Technology

Smart Networks - the Power of Machine Learning Controlled Computer Networks

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Thomas Gwasira

Thomas Gwasira - Reading the Air: Deep Learning in Radar, Communications and Acoustic Signal Processing

Talk description

An overview of how Peralex Electronics employs Deep Learning in radar, communications and acoustic signal processing applications.

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Speaker bio

Thomas is a Radar and Machine Learning Engineer at Peralex Electronics. He recently completed his MSc degree in Radar and Electronic Defence at the University of Cape Town, where his research focused on radar imaging. In his role, Thomas utilizes Deep Learning in radar, communications, and acoustic systems across a wide range of applications. He is particularly interested in the intersection of Engineering and Artificial Intelligence, aiming to develop advanced technologies that can make a positive impact on society.

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Peralex Electronics

Reading the Air: Deep Learning in Radar, Communications and Acoustic Signal Processing

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Mahmood-Ali Parker

Mahmood-Ali Parker - Liveness Detection: Defending Against the Emerging Threat of Deepfakes

Talk description

Liveness detection is a safeguard which plays a crucial role in the financial services industry for biometric fraud prevention. This talk will provide an introduction with a particular focus on the two main variants of face liveness detection, namely, active and passive liveness detection. Real-world scenarios, including deepfakes and other types of liveness spoofs will be discussed.

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Speaker bio

During his time completing a B.BusSci degree, specialising in Analytics at the University of Cape Town, Ali developed a keen interest in machine learning and a strong passion for NLP. Whilst working as a machine learning engineer at Sybrin, his role has encompassed a vast number of topics related to computer vision and NLP. However, his primary focus has been biometrics research and development. As an ambassador for DeepLearning.AI, he also hosts occasional community events to help further the AI scene in South Africa.

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Sybrin

Liveness Detection: Defending Against the Emerging Threat of Deepfakes

Vision

 16h00 - 16h30

☕

Break (Speaker Intros start at 4:25pm)

 16h30 - 18h00

RL - Foundations V 1 number of speakers

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Asad Jeewa

Asad Jeewa - Reinforcement Learning

Talk description

An explanation of the fundamentals of reinforcement learning, touching on multi-agent and multi-objective reinforcement learning

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Speaker bio

Asad Jeewa is a lecturer of Computer Science in the School of Mathematics, Statistics and Computer Science at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. He previously served as a researcher at InstaDeep and IBM Research Labs. He is currently pursuing a PhD at UKZN in Reinforcement Learning. Asad holds industry certifications in Software Development and Deep Learning. He supervises MSc and Honours students and reviews for international conferences.

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University of KwaZulu-Natal

Reinforcement Learning

RL

Lightning Talks 20 number of speakers

Multiple speakers

Hackathon Prep 1 number of speakers

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Mehrdad Ghaziasgar

Mehrdad Ghaziasgar - Hackathon prep: An unconvoluted introduction to CNNs

Talk description

Convolutional Neural Networks are at the heart of state-of-the-art detection, recognition and tracking of objects in images and image sequences, surpassing the capabilities of traditional neural networks in this domain by far. This talk takes a very visual and unconvoluted approach to describing how CNNs work from the ground up, describing the fundamentals and key concepts, and building up to describing some established CNN architectures that have proven their mettle in a range of vision-based tasks. The talk ultimately aims to provide a good intuition about how CNNs work and demystify and deconvolute key CNN terminology.

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Speaker bio

Dr Mehrdad Ghaziasgar is a Senior Lecturer in Computer Science at the University of the Western Cape. He has more than a decade of experience in research in the domain of applied machine learning, with over 40 accredited publications and an extensive postgraduate supervision track record. His research group has produced over 45 assistive technology prototypes, some of which have received national acclaim. He also consults to industry in the same capacity. He is particularly enthusiastic about finding ways to convey complex topics in Computing to diverse audiences.

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University of the Western Cape

Hackathon prep: An unconvoluted introduction to CNNs

Foundations Hackathon Vision

 18h00 - 23h59

Hackathon with Zindi & FruitPunch AI 3+ number of speakers

AI for Coral Reefs Hackathon with Fruitpunch.ai and Zindi (6 hours, end at midnight)

Day 3

  Fri 14 Jul 2023

 08h00 - 09h00

Morning coffee ☕

 09h00 - 10h00

Keynote V 1 number of speakers

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John Kamara

John Kamara - The AI opportunity for Africa

Talk description

Driving Innovation, Empowering Communities: Capacity Building for Inclusive AI in Africa

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Speaker bio

John Kamara is a Tech Entrepreneur with over 20 years’ experience working in new market acquisitions across various technology verticals in Europe, America, Asia and Africa.

John is one of Africa’s leading experts on how businesses can leverage key technology trends, transform organizations and drive competitive advantage for impact in industries including finance, agriculture, health, education, gaming and startup enterprises.

John is actively involved and heavily invested in new technologies focusing on IoT (Internet of Things), AI (Artificial Intelligence), Blockchain and Crowdfunding. Having worked in market growth leadership roles for global technology companies at Google, Conduit, eir Ireland, Digicel, BMC Software and others, John is committed to seeing technology play a critical role catapulting Africa into the Fourth Industrial Revolution while creating critical mass impact.

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Adanian Labs & AAICE

The AI opportunity for Africa

AI in Africa

 10h00 - 10h30

☕

Break (Speaker Intros start at 10:25am)

 10h30 - 12h00

Diffusion Models - Foundations VI 1 number of speakers

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Kevin Eloff

Kevin Eloff - Denoising Diffusion Models: Introduction and Applications

Talk description

Denoising Diffusion Models are a type of generative modelling which serves backbone of recent advances in image synthesis including Dall-E 2 and Imagen. These models utilise an iterative denoising process during inference to produce high quality samples. In this talk we explore the fundamentals of diffusion models, the intuition behind them, how they work in practice, and how they may be generalised to a wide range of applications.

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Speaker bio

MEng graduate from Stellenbosch Univeristy, with a thesis focused on combining speech processing and multi-agent reinforcement learning. Currently working at InstaDeep as a BioAI research engineer.

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InstaDeep

Denoising Diffusion Models: Introduction and Applications

Diffusion

Reinforcement Learning - Research VI 3 number of speakers

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Sasha Abramowitz

Sasha Abramowitz - Beyond Python: How Julia can Accelerate your Reinforcement Learning projects

Talk description

This talk will discuss what makes Julia so applicable to RL, how it could benefit your future projects, what it’s competitors are and why it’s not yet as widely used as python.

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Speaker bio

Sasha is an MSc graduate from UCT, with a thesis focused on evolutionary methods for reinforcement learning. He is currently a research engineer at InstaDeep on the multi-agent team.

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Instadeep

Beyond Python: How Julia can Accelerate your Reinforcement Learning projects

RL Data Science

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Batsi Ziki

Batsi Ziki - Curiosity: The compass that leads to intrinsic motivation

Talk description

In this talk we focus on methods to instil curiosity in reinforcement learning (RL) agents, as a form of intrinsic motivation. We will start by exploring some of the challenges in RL, such as dealing with sparse rewards. To overcome these challenges, researchers investigated adding intrinsic motivation to agents. After defining intrinsic motivation, and its impact within RL, we’ll delve into the pivotal role curiosity plays. We will trace the evolution of curiosity algorithms and learn how they act as a driving force for intrinsic motivation. Lastly, we’ll showcase cutting-edge research and methodologies that harness curiosity to enhance RL agents’ performance. From overcoming challenges to unlocking new possibilities, curiosity opens the door to transformative advancements in RL.

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Speaker bio

Batsi Ziki is a research intern at InstaDeep and concurrently pursuing a Master of Science degree at the University of Cape Town, under the supervision of Professor Jonathan Shock. Batsi’s current research interests revolve around Meta-Reinforcement Learning, a field that explores the development of intelligent agents capable of adapting to any new task with as little data as possible. Beyond his academic pursuits, Batsi enjoys immersing himself in the world of video games, indulging in captivating films, and taking walks.

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InstaDeep and University of Cape Town

Curiosity: The compass that leads to intrinsic motivation

RL

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Divanisha Patel

Divanisha Patel - Reinforcement Learning and its Applications to Real-World Problems

Talk description

This talk will provide an introductory overview of reinforcement learning and its key concepts. We will then focus on how InstaDeep is using reinforcement learning to solve real-world problems.

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Speaker bio

I am a PhD student at the RAIL Lab (University of the Witwatersrand) and an AI research engineer at InstaDeep. My PhD research focuses on model-based reinforcement learning - more specifically, I am looking at how models for intuitive physical reasoning tasks can be learned and then used within a reinforcement learning framework. My work at InstaDeep involves applying reinforcement learning to solve the combinatorial optimisation problem of 3D bin packing.

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Instadeep

Reinforcement Learning and its Applications to Real-World Problems

RL Applied ML & Industry

Industry VI 3 number of speakers

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Eileen Izette Carter

Eileen Izette Carter - RightsTech: Balancing Innovation and Human Rights in the Age of Deep Learning

Talk description

In the rapidly evolving landscape of deep learning technologies, it is imperative to emphasize the importance of human rights and the principle of doing no harm. While ethics serves as a crucial foundation, it is not enough to ensure the protection of individual rights and dignity. Human rights must be the guiding principle throughout the development and deployment of these powerful algorithms.

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Speaker bio

Dr Eileen I Carter is an accomplished legal professional, serving as the Provincial Manager of the South African Human Rights Commission in the Eastern Cape. As an admitted attorney and accredited mediator, she has dedicated her career to promoting access to justice for marginalized communities. She boasts with several academic, professional and leadership accolades and has presented on local regional and international platforms on issues relating to the rights of vulnerable groups. She is currently pursuing studies on the intersection between human rights and developing technologies.

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South African Human Rights Commission

RightsTech: Balancing Innovation and Human Rights in the Age of Deep Learning

Legal AI Ethics

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Chijioke Okorie

Chijioke Okorie - Navigating legal and licensing landscape for machine learning applications

Talk description

My talk will offer an introduction to the legal and licensing landscape for machine learning projects and application and will engage participants on the legal and licensing challenges faced in their work, proposing solutions and getting feedback/input as to the workability of proposed solutions.

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Speaker bio

Chijioke Okorie founded and leads the Data Science Law Lab - a research group at the University of Pretoria’s Centre for Intellectual Property Law that deploys research in law and produces independent and authoritative evidence and policy advice to support the growth of all aspects of data science research, development and application across Africa. Before becoming a full time researcher and policy consultant, Dr Okorie was a Senior Associate in the law firm of CLP Legal, Lagos Nigeria. She is also the Lead Advisor at Penguide Advisory, a firm that provides research, educational, legal and regulatory advisory services in various fields including copyright and (emerging) technologies. At Penguide, she has the responsibility of leading research, training and legal advisory services for a range of clients including government and government agencies, companies and non-profit organisations, entrepreneurs within Nigeria, across Africa and internationally. Dr Okorie is ‘Africa Correspondent’ at award-winning intellectual property law blog, The IPKat and an associate editor of the South African Intellectual Property Law Journal. More information about Dr Okorie can be found at www.chijiokeo.com

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University of Pretoria

Navigating legal and licensing landscape for machine learning applications

Legal

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Roger Carthew

Roger Carthew - How People Power your business

Talk description

Enabling your People to do their best everyday, is so often forgotten in the frantic pace of Tech start up’s. I will share valuable lessons learnt over a successful global career on how to create an ideal environment for business and employee growth and success.

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Speaker bio

Roger’s leadership track record spans, South Africa, the Middle East, Europe and most recently the US. He has partnered with CEO’s Founders, Boards of Directors and Investors across a wide variety of business sectors in local, regional and global roles. His passion is to shape strategy, unlock potential , build teams and deliver success . He recently returned to Cape Town and is now the Chief Human Resource Officer for DataProphet, an award winning Cape Town based Artificial Intelligence for Manufacturing Scale Up. Roger is a certified Executive Coach , and lives in Paarl where he enjoys the beauty of the Cape Winelands.

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DataProphet

How People Power your business

People

 12h00 - 13h00

🍽️

Lunch Break

 13h00 - 15h30

Women in Tech Workshop 4 number of speakers

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Andrea Bohmert

Andrea Bohmert - Control your own Destiny

Talk description

We are often prisoners of our own assumptions and let others take control of our life. The talk is about some important decisions to take, especially as women, to be in control of our life, career, future. It is an honest reflection of the choices we have to make and how to best prepare.

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Speaker bio

Andrea Böhmert is a partner at Knife Capital, a Venture Capital company based in Cape Town. By leveraging knowledge, networks & funding, they focus on supporting the international expansion of South Africa’s high growth scale-ups. Having grown up in Germany, Andrea came to South Africa in 1994. The early years of her professional career were spent in Corporate SA, as Head of Strategy for Siemens Southern Africa and Manager of a Software Division at Dimension Data. In 2007, she entered the Venture Capital space by single-handedly raising a R350m VC Fund, Hasso Plattner Ventures Africa, from the co-founder of SAP, Hasso Plattner. In 2011, she joined Knife Capital as Partner. Since then, Andrea has been instrumental in many eco-system defining initiatives in South Africa – representing South Africa’s VC system on numerous local and international panels. She has recently been appointed to the Board of SAVCA, the South African Venture Capital Association. Her goal is to prove that South African founders and the companies they build can compete on a global level. She sees herself as a business builder and a business partner, captivated by founders who have a deeper motivation and embrace the journey. Andrea knows that one needs an ecosystem to succeed, and is trying to play her part in building that.

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Knife Capital

Control your own Destiny

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Thenjiwe Kubheka

Thenjiwe Kubheka - Developmental opportunities for women within the Technology sector

Talk description

We as ladies are a rare breed within this beautiful and futuristic sector. Perhaps, with some introspection, we can do even more.
I’ll address some developmental opportunities I’ve noticed, such as imposter syndrome, lack of female mentors and lack of networking sessions.

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InterCodex

Developmental opportunities for women within the Technology sector

Education

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Mmaki Jantjies

Mmaki Jantjies - Intentional career development in the field of AI

Talk description

This presentation focuses on being intentional about personal development and career growth, particularly in the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI), with a focus on societal impact. The talk is aimed at inspiring individuals to consider their roles in shaping the future of AI and its implications on society.

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Speaker bio

Mmaki Jantjies holds a PhD in computer science with research interests broadly in the field of technology for development and is an NRF rated researcher.

She is the Group Executive for Innovation at Telkom and is also an adjunct associate professor at the University of the Western Cape.

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Telkom

Intentional career development in the field of AI

Applied ML & Industry

Panel discussion

AI Safety and Governance in Africa Workshop 4 number of speakers

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Jonas Kgomo

Jonas Kgomo - A Guided Walkthrough the African AI Safety Landscape

Talk description

This talk is on AI Alignment, Safety and Preparedness progress in Africa. It will look at cutting-edge alignment and FAIR (Fairness, Accountability, Interpretability, and Robustness) progress in the context of AI safety. We are excited to explore the potential for African countries to lead in responsible AI development and safety. In this session, we will delve into key aspects, such as community engagement, public awareness, and initiatives in low-resource languages. Offer recommendations for strengthening AI safety research, education, policy frameworks, and collaborations. Discuss the potential for African countries to become leaders in responsible AI development and safety.

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Speaker bio

I am Jonas, the founder of the African AI Safety Lab, Equiano Institute, and Progress Studies Journal. I am passionate about promoting AI alignment and policy for African.

I pursued my studies in Computer Science, earning a candidate for Masters at the University of Sussex and completing a BSc in Mathematics at Istanbul University. As an independent researcher, I established the Progress Studies Journal, which serves as an overlay journal dedicated to distilling research aimed at technological progress, and responsible innovation.

Previously, I served as Founder in Residence at Enterpreneur UK in London, where I worked with a select group of entrepreneurs to build projects and foster partnerships. I am also actively involved with Cohere For AI as a volunteer, leading AI Safety Talks. In this role, under Sara Hooker.

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Equiano Institute

A Guided Walkthrough the African AI Safety Landscape

AI Ethics

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Zainab Taonga Chirwa

Zainab Taonga Chirwa - Perspectives on AI Governance in Africa

Talk description

An introductory discussion on AI governance frameworks on the African continent and their status alongside global efforts in mitigating and preventing AI risks. The aim of the presentation is to make a case for the urgent need for governing AI by our governments and international regional community bodies such as the AU, SADC, COMESA, ECOWAS and AMU.

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Speaker bio

Zainab is a final year LLB student at the University of Cape Town and a graduate of Rhodes University having majored in Geography and legal theory. She is the current chairperson of the Effective Altruism student society at the University of Cape Town. Zainab is interested in issues of governance the development of effective policy for positive impact. She is currently involved in researching current proposals and drafting of global AI governance frameworks.

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Effective Altruism UCT/ University of Cape Town

Perspectives on AI Governance in Africa

AI Ethics

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Benjamin Sturgeon

Benjamin Sturgeon - An introduction to technical AI safety and alignment research

Talk description

This talk discusses the key arguments for why powerful AI systems may pose catastrophic risks.

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Speaker bio

Ben, based in Cape Town, used to work as a machine learning engineer. He’s now focused on studying AI safety, using a research grant from the Long Term Future Fund. His research currently focuses on trying to measure levels of agency in AI agents in RL settings. He’s also interested in large language models and how they might be used to influence the behaviour of RL agents.

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UCT, EA UCT

An introduction to technical AI safety and alignment research

Research AI Ethics

Breakout sessions

Ml in Healthcare Workshop 7 number of speakers

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Ayogeboh Epizitone

Ayogeboh Epizitone - AI applications in healthcare

Talk description

A Data-Driven AI Classification Model for Health Care Applications.

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Speaker bio

Ayogeboh Epizitone is a researcher and a PhD candidate whose research goals and achievements have been centred on Information Technology in the 21st century. She has multiple certificates, diplomas and a master degree. Her experience and background cover IT, Accounting, Finance, Business, and Management sciences. She is also a Durban University of Technology’s ICT and Society Research group member. She holds a special inclination towards scientific computational methods in the specialized areas of machine intelligence, computer systems, software implementations and data sciences. And she is dedicated to incorporating scientific cutting-edge data-intensive techniques to generate pertinent, astute and valuable solutions to society’s acute problems. Hence her current and future work and interests from this angle delve into the use of data science, Machine learning and artificial intelligence with an emphasis on building long-term intelligent, resilient and sustainable systems for efficient and effective applications.

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Durban University of Technology

AI applications in healthcare

Applied ML & Industry Healthcare

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Siphiwe Thwala

Siphiwe Thwala - Biomedical Text Insights Extraction

Talk description

The biomedical domain has a plethora of unstructured data in different forms (clinical notes, image scans, laboratory data, and electrical impulse scans). We present an overview of biomedical text insights extraction for structuring clinical notes.

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Speaker bio

Siphiwe Thwala is a Research Scientist within the computational linguistics team at IBM Research Africa, South African Lab. His research background is in computational astrophysics, with a focus on using unsupervised learning to detect signals of the plasma produced by non-thermal diffuse emission, in extended radio sources. His work at IBM includes: semantic based sentiment analysis on twitter data; interactive data visualisation of twitter data; and semantic based insights extraction and knowledge modelling on biomedical text.

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IBM Research

Biomedical Text Insights Extraction

Applied ML & Industry Healthcare

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Junior Muka

Junior Muka - Improving data quality using machine learning

Talk description

The effectiveness of machine learning models relies heavily on the quality of the data they are trained on. However, managing data quality presents well-known challenges, including manual, time-consuming, and resource-intensive processes. In this presentation, we will explore how machine learning techniques can be utilized to enhance data quality.

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Speaker bio

Junior Muka is a passionate data management professional with over 15 years of industry experience. He possesses deep expertise in data governance, data quality management, and big data architecture. He heads up data governance at Woolworths and regularly shares his experience with students as a part-time Lecturer at the University of Western Cape (UWC). Junior is a PhD candidate in Computer and Information Sciences at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock (UALR), USA.

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PhD Candidate - University of Arkansas at Little Rock

Improving data quality using machine learning

Research Healthcare

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Oluwasegun Julius Aroba

Oluwasegun Julius Aroba - Uncovering the emergent of AI in Health Care Industries in the 21st Century

Talk description

The fields of customizable pinpoint medicine and healthcare research have recently undergone a revolution thanks to artificial intelligence and machine learning. Large amounts of health data are now available, including patient medical records made accessible by wearable sensors, health insurance claims, medical imaging, surveillance, and more. The rapid development of machine learning algorithms, which primarily use deep learning techniques to analyze clinical data, is gradually improving disease surveillance, enabling doctors to make better diagnoses, facilitating early disease detection, uncovering novel treatments and drug interactions, and other effects. Research and development in this area are moving more quickly than before.

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Speaker bio

Dr Julius Oluwasegun Aroba, a Durban University of Technology lecturer, Department of Information Systems. Honorable Research Associate in the Department of Operations and Quality Management. He has a PhD. in Information Technology. A graduate of Information Technology University from the prestigious Coventry University United Kingdom, BSc. Computer Science and Technology (Upper-Class Division) Crawford University whose research inclination focus area are into Wireless Sensor Networks, Hyper-Heuristic, Hybrid-Heuristic, Meta-Analysis, Project Management, Data Science, Machine Learning, SAP Specialist with over decade years of experience in the higher education sector, healthcare industries, government parastatals, a consultant across the globe, a graduate member of IEEE, IITPSA South Africa, Member of IET UK. He has Chaired and Co-Chaired International and National Conferences. He is a global mentor to SMEs and European African, Sisonke NdabaX, and a seasoned guest speaker. He has a vast collaboration network across Spain, France, Morocco, the USA, the UK, South Africa, and Sweden.

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Durban University of Technology

Uncovering the emergent of AI in Health Care Industries in the 21st Century

ML in Healthcare Workshop Healthcare

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Kayode Adetunji

Kayode Adetunji - Using Deep Learning to Predict CVD Multimorbidity in Africa: A Guide to Navigate the Dark Abyss

Talk description

The talk discusses the problems in applying deep learning to predict CVD multimorbidity in Africa. Accuracy issues and explainability limitations will be explored, which will be followed by proposed solutions using emerging techniques and algorithms.

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Speaker bio

Dr Kayode Adetunji holds a PhD in Electrical and Information Engineering from Wits university, worked on computational and artificial intelligence algorithms. He is currently a Postdoctoral research fellow at the Sydney Brenner Institute for Molecular Bioscience (SBIMB), working with the MADIVA team. His research focal point is to develop advanced machine learning models for understanding the patterns of multimorbidity using phenotypes, genomic and other etiological characteristics.

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Sydney Brenner Institute for Molecular Bioscience (SBIMB)

Using Deep Learning to Predict CVD Multimorbidity in Africa: A Guide to Navigate the Dark Abyss

Healthcare Applied ML & Industry

Break (20 min)

Panel discussion

 15h30 - 16h00

☕

Break

 16h00 - 17h00

Panel Discussion 4 number of speakers

Hosted by Callum Tilbury

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Sandras Phiri

Sandras Phiri - Panel discussion

Talk description

Panel discussion

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Speaker bio

Sandras Phiri is the CEO and Founder of Pranary, the practical business school. He is a business and life strategist.

Sandras is an expert on startup and revenue growth. He works with entrepreneurs from over 40 countries helping them launch, grow customers and revenue as well as get investor ready. Sandras has founded successful companies in IT, entertainment and education. He has worked with over 25 organisations and has lectured at over 17 universities. His work has taken him to 24 countries.

Sandras has a degree in Computer Science and an MBA from University

of Cape Town. He has shared stages with Facebook and Asana co- founder Dustin Maskovitch, YouTube co-founder Steve Chen, Clay

Christensen, Guy Kawasaki and Steve Blank. He has worked in banking, mobile payments, unit trusts, IT and education. He has been taught by some of the world’s greatest teachers including Dr John Demartini, Roger Hamilton and Tony Robbins. He has been named one of the 15 tech people to follow in South Africa in 2018 and 2019.

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Zara Schroeder

Zara Schroeder - Panel Discussion

Talk description

Panel Discussion

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Speaker bio

Zara Schroeder is a Researcher and the Communications Coordinator at Research ICT Africa. Zara holds a Master’s degree in Public Sociology and Anthropology from Stellenbosch University. Zara has experience in qualitative research methods. Zara is skilled in research methods and qualitative data analysis. She has a wide background in supporting non-governmental organisations in South Africa in enhancing the visibility and impact of their work. Zara’s research interests lie in the intersectionalities between digital and social inequalities, gender and AI, children and AI, and participatory action and AI. Zara is committed to rethinking development in a digital world through methods that promote citizen participation.

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Research ICT Africa

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Mark Gaffley

Mark Gaffley - Panel Discussion

Talk description

Panel Discussion

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Speaker bio

Mark is an admitted attorney with over ten years of start-up, in-house legal and research experience gained through leading local and international organisations including Uber, Takealot, Media24, Human Sciences Research Council, simple.Capital()and Research ICT Africa. At present he runs his own research/legal consultancy, .athinktank and serves as a Partner at MVH Attorneys and Head of Research & Intelligence at Reflector Marketing. His areas of expertise include contracts, commercial, e-commerce, technology, start-ups, compliance and artificial intelligence.

Mark holds degrees in arts (majoring in history and sociology) and law, both from the University of Cape Town (UCT). Currently, he is reading for his PhD in jurisprudence at UCT where his research focuses on certain ethical implications of artificial intelligence, particularly concerning the effect AI has on human autonomy and independent decision-making.

Finally, Mark is a co-author of Human Rights and the Fourth Industrial Revolution in South Africa (HSRC Press, 2021), the first major investigation of the real and potential human rights implications of the 4IR in South Africa.

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University of Cape Town

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Thapelo Nthite

Thapelo Nthite - Building an AI startup in Africa

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Speaker bio

Son. Brother. Friend. Thapelo Nthite is also the Co-Founder and CEO of Botlhale AI, an award- winning Artificial Intelligence startup backed by GrindStone, Branson Centre and Creative Destructive Labs - Montreal. Botlhale AI enables businesses to engage with their customers in languages that their customers understand and trust. Though still in its early stage, Botlhale AI has done work with some of the biggest organisations in the country including MTN and Capitec. Thapelo is a Mechatronics Engineering graduate from the University of Cape Town who is passionate about driving digital inclusion on the continent by disrupting digital monolingualism. Thapelo has been listed on News24’s Top 100 Mandela’s Of The Future and Mail & Guardian’s top 200 South Africans. Having built one of the first documented end-to-end text-to-speech systems using AI for any South African language, his contributions to this space have been published by IEEE, and his work is starting to simplify the way people interact with technology.

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Botlhale AI

AI and Africa - A New Day or a Painful Replay?

 17h00 - 17h30

Prize giving 🏅 and closing ceremony 🏆🏁

 17h30 - 18h00

Travel 🎒

 18h00 - 20h30

Instadeep Movie Night 🎬 (Limited Tickets!)

The Labia Theatre

 20h30 - 23h00

AfterParty in Town

 23h00

Travel Back to Residence (Bus departs)

Organising committee

Programme Chair | Director

Anna Bosman

University of Pretoria

CEO | Director

Christopher Currin

Institute of Science and Technology Austria & IBRO-Simons Computational Neuroscience Imbizo

Accounting | Director

Maria Schuld

Xanadu & Part-Time Researcher at the University of KwaZulu-Natal

Fundraising

Thapelo Sindane

University of Pretoria

Logistics

Nandi Mwase

University of Pretoria

Programme Chair

Lydia de Lange

DataProphet

Fundraising

Chris Fourie

LifeQ

Marketing & Communications, Local organiser, Logistics

Simbarashe Aldrin Ngorima

Catering & Social Events, Fundraising

Dinorego Bauba Mphogo

Tshwane University of Technology

Hackathon

Guillaume Odendaal

Chisl

Local organiser, Programme Chair, Fundraising, Catering & Social Events

Laing Lourens

CSIR

Marketing & Communications, Local organiser, Logistics

Nompilo Mkhulisi

Durban University of Technology

Marketing & Communications

Avashlin Moodley

CSIR

Local organiser

Leo Hyams

University of Cape Town

Marketing & Communications

Joel Leonard

University of Pretoria

Programme

Avashna Govender

CSIR

Logistics

Thapelo Maupa

Independent researcher

Logistics

Maryam Mohamad Al Mahdi

University of Pretoria

Local organiser, Marketing & Communications

Nomonde Khalo

IBM

Marketing & Communications

Yeshalen Naicker

CSIR

Marketing & Communications

Nilesh Jain

Unversity of Witwatersrand

Logistics, Marketing & Communications

Matimba Shingange

MTN

Local organiser, Hackathon, Programme

Claude Formanek

University of Cape Town, InstaDeep

Local organiser, Logistics

Ruan de Kock

University of Cape Town, InstaDeep

Local organiser, Logistics

Callum Rhys Tilbury

InstaDeep

Local organiser

Tharien Potgieter

Centre for AI Research, University of Cape Town

Sponsors

All 🙌 Supporters 🐘 African Elephant (R100 000+) 🦏 Black Rhino (R50 000) African Buffalo (AI Fest) 🖼️ White Rhino (Poster session) 🐆 Leopard (Hackathon) 🐃 Cape Buffalo (R25 000) 🦁 Lion (up to R15 000) 🧤 Community 🏛 Affiliated institutions

🙌 Supporters

Deep Learning Indaba

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🐘 African Elephant (R100 000+)

NITheCS

DST-NRF Centre of Excellence in Mathematical and Statisical Sciences (CoE-MaSS)

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🦏 Black Rhino (R50 000)

InstaDeep

IBM

City of Cape Town

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African Buffalo (AI Fest)

Lelapa AI

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🖼️ White Rhino (Poster session)

AI Expo Africa

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🐆 Leopard (Hackathon)

Zindi

Fruitpunch AI

Butler's Pizza

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🐃 Cape Buffalo (R25 000)

CHPC

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🦁 Lion (up to R15 000)

Uber

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🧤 Community

Sisonke Biotik

Masakhane

AICE - Artificial Intelligence Centre of Excellence Africa

Adanian Labs

SAAIA - South African Artificial Intelligence Association

AI Media Group

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🏛 Affiliated institutions

AIMS

University of Cape Town

University of the Witwatersrand

University of Pretoria

University of KwaZulu-Natal

Insitute of Science and Technology Austria

Tshwane University of Technology

CSIR

Durban University of Technology

Centre for AI Research

DataProphet

IBRO-Simons Computational Neuroscience Imbizo

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FAQ

General

  I’m arriving late on Tuesday, can I still register on Wednesday?

Yes! Come early (8am) to register on the Wednesday morning.

  I have a travel grant or have booked accommodation through the IndabaX to stay at UCT, where is it?

The accommodation is at Fuller Hall, which is a 5 minute walk from the venue.

Directions can be found here.

Check-in is 24/7. Please bring your IndabaX name badge, ID or passport to check-in.

Funding

  How much does it cost to attend the Indaba𝕏?

The Indaba𝕏 is free to attend if you applied and are accepted. There are paid registration options for academics and industry professionals.

Speakers have their fees waived.

  How much does it cost the Indaba𝕏 per person?

Each person we have at the event costs the Indaba𝕏 ~R1700. Considering we have 300 people, this is a lot of money. We are very grateful to our partners for making this possible.

As a community-orientated event, we are committed to making the Indaba𝕏 as accessible as possible. We have a number of travel grants available to help people attend the Indaba𝕏. These are allocated at application time. See /register/travel-grants/ for more.

  Can I get funding to attend the Indaba𝕏?

We have a limited number of travel grants that have awarded to applicants. These are allocated at application time. See /register/travel-grants/ for more.

One of the hardest decisions we make is allocating finite resources to infinite passion. We wish we could fund everyone, but we can’t. We are very grateful to our partners for making any of this possible.

If you need funding to attend, but did not get one this year, the best thing you can do is to apply again next year. We will be around and rotating the event across our beautiful country, and we will be trying our best to make the Indaba𝕏 as accessible as possible.

  How can I support the Indaba𝕏?

If you are an organisation, consider partnering with us to gain more visiblity and support the Indaba𝕏. If you are an individual, attending through paid registration options is also beneficial. If you are feeling particularly benevolent, consider donating.

Additionally, consider helping organise the event, volunteering at the event, shouting about the event, or just being a good human being.

Food

  Will there be coffee?

Yes, there will be coffee and tea available at certains times throughout the day!

  Will there be food?

Yes, we will provide lunch on the 12th, 13th, and 14th July. We will also provide snacks and drinks throughout the day.

If you have an “Accommodation” travel grant (you will know this explicitly), we provide breakfast for you on the 12th, 13th, 14th, and 15th of July.

Each evening will have an activity with some food and drinks provided, but in limited quantities and not intended as a full dinner experience. We strongly encourage you to make friends and go explore the city for dinner.

Safety

  Is Cape Town safe?

Cape Town is a beautiful city, but like any city, it has its problems. We recommend that you take the same precautions as you would in any other city.

The University of Cape Town has security guards on campus and in the residences.

In the city centre, there are security guards on every corner, making the city one of the safer places to be.

Time

  When should I arrive/leave Cape Town for the Indaba𝕏?

We suggest arriving the day before the Indaba𝕏 starts (i.e. the 11th July) and leaving the day after the Indaba𝕏 ends (i.e. the 15th of July).

  How packed is the schedule?

Very. We have an awesome selection of speakers and activities to fill up the time from ~8:30 am until 5pm and beyond each day. The evening activities are normally optional, but we highly recommend you attend them for the full experience. Remember to take time for yourself, and to explore Cape Town and surrounds.

See more on the schedule page (updated over time).

Location

  Where is the Indaba𝕏 exactly?

The 6th edition of Indaba𝕏 will take place at the University of Cape Town in South Africa.

We will be in the Kramer LT1-3 and the quad area of the Kramer Building on Middle Campus.

For more information, see also ABOUT

  Is there parking on campus?

Yes, there is parking on campus. We will provide more information at registration.

  How do I get to the venue from Cape Town International Airport?

The venue is a 30 minute drive from the airport. There are a number of options for getting to the venue from the airport:

1. Taxi ~ R350 one way
2. Drive (30 min)
3. MyCiti bus to the City Centre and then a taxi to the venue

  What are some things to do in Cape Town?

Explore Cape Town and surrounds, see UCT’s CMC Cape Town page for suggestions.

For on-campus activities, you don’t have to venture far to explore these:

• Take yourself on a tour of UCT’s Upper Campus and see the historic buildings
• Attend a performance at the Baxter Theatre or the Little Theatre
• Visit the Irma Stern Museum or the gallery at Michaelis School of Fine Art

We know that your time is limited when attending a conference, but if you plan on travelling to Cape Town, we recommend visiting a few of our top attractions:

• Table Mountain: The ride on the aerial cableway is a gentle one: the rotating state-of-the-art cable car takes visitors from the lower station to the top in around 5 minutes. You will be 1000 m above the city, and here in this unique location, you will find rock hyrax, lizards, butterflies and the odd porcupine. There is also a wide array of birdlife flying above great patches of fynbos, the Cape’s indigenous flora. Atop the mountain is a self-service buffet cafe while you can always pack a picnic and enjoy what still is part of a national park. Find out more on the Table Mountain website
• Robben Island is visited every year by thousands of people keen to understand and honour the important aspects of South Africa’s history that the island represents. Find out more on the Robben Island website
• V&A Waterfront is a precinct in the city center that offers a wide variety of attractions and activities to enjoy. From arts and culture, such as the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa (MOCAA) to more leisurely pursuits such as a sunset cruise on one of the chartered boats berthed here or restaurants and shopping. Do pay a visit to The Watershed with local products, arts and crafts. Find out more on the V&A Waterfront website.
• Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden is one of the great botanic gardens of the world. Few gardens can match the sheer grandeur of the setting of Kirstenbosch with the slopes of Table Mountain as a backdrop. In summer, the gardens host open-air concerts and tickets usually sell fast. Find out more on the Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens website
• Cape Winelands are for wine tasting, and a trip here is one of the best ways to spend a day in Cape Town. Combine the delicious wines with some of the most beautiful landscapes on earth, century-old architecture, and awe-inspiring food, and it’s no surprise that it’s one of Cape Town’s most beloved activities for visitors and locals alike. Find out more on the Cape Winelands website
• Cape Point is the scenic outlook where rugged rocks and sheer cliffs tower more than 200 metres above the sea and cut deep into the ocean, providing a spectacular background for the park’s rich biodiversity. Cape Point falls within the southern section of Table Mountain National Park. The natural vegetation of the areas – fynbos – comprises the smallest but most diverse of the world’s six floral kingdoms. Find out more on the Cape Point ​​​​​website

Accommodation

  Can I stay at UCT?

The University regularly hosts visitors and has a variety of accommodation available on and off campus:

• All Africa House is UCT’s on-campus B&B and provides accommodation for visiting academics, researchers and visitors on UCT-related business.
• Stay&Connect manages UCT’s student residences that can be made available for holiday accommodation (during university holidays), large groups and student delegations.
• Protea Hotel Cape Town Mowbray and Protea Hotel Cape Town Waterfront Breakwater Lodge and are hotels close to Main Campus and Breakwater Campus in the city centre

  Other places to stay?

All accommodation options in this list are within 10km of UCT and have a rating of more than 3.5 stars on Google reviews or higher than 7.5 on booking.com. We cannot vouch for any of these accommodation options, but they should give a good idea of where to start looking. AirBnb listings and University Res accommodation are not included here.

Under R500 per night

• Lighthouse Farm Lodge

• Cape Town Micro Apartments

• Green elephant backpackers

• The Lenox Guesthouse & Backpackers

• The Kimberley Hotel - Cape Town

• Vibe & Joy Guesthouse

Between R500-R1000 per night

• Neighbourgood Newlands

• Selton guest house

• Obz hotel

• DoubleTree by Hilton Cape Town - Upper East Side

• Pamba on 131

• Dancer’s Cottages

• Rachel’s Home from Home

• Authentic Newlands accommodation

• Oak Manor

• Malleson garden cottage

• The Mountains

• One Above

• Best Western Cape Suites Hotel

• CampusKey Cape Town

• The Rondebosch

Over R1000 per night

• No.9 Keurboom

• Bradclin Sport Newlands

• Roodenburg House

• Newlands Guesthouse

• Bay Leaf Cottage

• Star Apartments

• Sun Square City Bowl Hotel

Useful links

• To access UCT locations and a route map of the UCT bus (called “Jammie Shuttle”), see UCT campus maps
• To view directions to UCT locations and routes, see UCT route maps
• To find out what’s happening at UCT, see UCT News