Morning coffee/tea and late registration
Opening talk
Break
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.
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.
Lunch Break
Break (coffee only) (Speaker intros start at 2:25pm)
Sponsored by Lelapa AI and SAAIA.
Morning coffee/tea
Break (Speaker Intros start at 10:25am)
Lunch Break
Break (coffee only) (Speaker Intros start at 2:25pm)
Break (Speaker Intros start at 4:25pm)
Multiple speakers
AI for Coral Reefs Hackathon with Fruitpunch.ai and Zindi (6 hours, end at midnight)
Morning coffee ☕
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.
Break (Speaker Intros start at 10:25am)
Lunch Break
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.
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.
Break
Hosted by Callum Tilbury
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.
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.
Prize giving 🏅 and closing ceremony 🏆🏁
Travel 🎒
AfterParty in Town