Speakers

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Ahmed Mohammed Ahmed

Grokking in neural networks and the role of regularisation

Day 2 - 15h00 - 16h30

Lecture Lecture
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Alaa Aldein Mohamed Suliman Ibrahim

University of Kwazulu-Natal

Transfer Learning-Based Method with Extreme Gradient Boost Classifier for Surface Defect Classification of Hot-Rolled Steel Strips

Day 2 - 10h30 - 12h00

Lecture Lecture
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Amy Bray

Zindi

Competitive Machine Learning to Improving your CV

Lecture Lecture
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Avi Moodley

Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR)

NLP Solutions for Practical Industry Use Cases

Day 4 - 13h00 - 14h00

Lecture Lecture
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Besman Guesmi

DETSlideNet: Dual-Encoder SwinTransformer for Scalable Landslides Detection and Monitoring

Lecture Lecture
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Bigomokero Antoine Bagula

University of the Western Cape (UWC)

Artificial Learning: From Federated Learning to Diversity Learning

Day 2 - 15h00 - 16h30

Lecture Lecture
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Charl Botha

AI Safety

AI Progress: Promise or Peril

Lecture Lecture
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Craig Parker

Wits Planetary Health Research

Beyond Weather Warnings: Machine Learning Reveals the Hidden Biology of Climate Health Vulnerability

Day 4 - 14h30 - 15h30

Lecture Lecture
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David de Villiers

MWR CyberSec

Overlooked and Undersecured: Prompt Injection Attacks on LLM Applications

Day 2 - 10h30 - 12h00

Lecture Lecture
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Dr Sebonkile Thaba

University of Johannesburg

From Supply Chains to Smart Solutions: Empowering Non-Technical Students with Blockchain Innovation

Day 2 - 10h30 - 12h00

Lecture Lecture
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Dr. Axel Tidemann

Takealot

Machine learning at Takealot

Day 3 - 09h00 - 10h00

Lecture Lecture
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Dr. Gavin Rens

Stellenbosch University

Symbolic Methods in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

Day 3 - 10h30 - 12h00

Fundamentals Fundamentals
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Dr. Hossein Masoumi-Karakani

University of Pretoria

Data Culture Rising: Literacy for the Next Generation

Day 4 - 10h30 - 12h00

Fundamentals Fundamentals
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Dr. Joan Byamugisha

IBM Research - Africa

Evolution of NLP Methods, and their Fit-for-purpose

Day 2 - 15h00 - 16h30

Fundamentals Fundamentals
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Dr. Karen Walstra

AI School Policy: An Urgent Need

Day 4 - 14h30 - 15h30

Lecture Lecture
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Dr. Lili Rademan

Centre for Research on Evaluation, Science and Technology (CREST), Stellenbosch University

Beyond the Poster: Practical Presentation Skills for Researchers

Day 1 - 09h00 - 11h00

Workshop Workshop
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Dr. Sara Andreotti

Stellenbosch University / SharkSafe Barrier Pty / SharkWise Pty / SCAR Trust

Workshop: Building Science Communication Capacity in Africa

Workshop Workshop
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Dr. Werner Janse van Rensburg

Centre for High Performance Computing

Introduction to NICIS: Your Compute (CHPC), Data (DIRISA) and Network (SANReN) Infrastructure Services Partner

Day 4 - 13h00 - 14h00

Lecture Lecture
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Dylan Geldenhuys

Sand Technologies

Building a Digital Twin for Telco: Optimizing Customer Satisfaction with Causal ML - Simulating interventions, predicting customer impact, and guiding network decisions at scale

Day 4 - 14h30 - 15h30

Lecture Lecture
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Francois Meyer

University of Cape Town

Improving Text Generation for Low-Resource South African Languages

Day 2 - 15h00 - 16h30

Lecture Lecture
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Francois Naude

Institute of Mine Seismology

Hackathon / Augmentation and Training Strategies for Improved Phase Arrival Picking in Microseismic Monitoring

Day 2 - 15h00 - 16h30

Lecture Lecture
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Gabriela Penelopé Carolus

Division of Health Systems and Public Health, Department of Global Health, Stellenbosch University

Ground Truth: Blending Clinical Evidence and Unstructured Deep Learning for a Culturally Responsive AI Health Innovation

Day 4 - 14h30 - 15h30

Lecture Lecture
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Jason Max Chalom

Building out a sustainable and production ready AI software solution

Day 3 - 10h30 - 12h00

Lecture Lecture
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Jeroen Van Goey

InstaDeep

Machine Learning Interatomic Potentials (MLIP)

Day 3 - 10h30 - 12h00

Lecture Lecture
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John Matogo

IBM

Skills Build Resources

Day 3 - 13h30 - 14h30

Lecture Lecture
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Luke Taylor

DeepGate

Why AI is Power-Hungry - Lessons from the Brain and How We Can Fix It

Day 3 - 10h30 - 12h00

Lecture Lecture
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Mbalenhle Ntuli

Stellenbosch University

Workshop: Building Science Communication Capacity in Africa

Day 1 - 09h00 - 11h00

Workshop Workshop
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Mr. Boyd Robert Kane

AI Safety

Employment after AGI: Paths, Dangers, Strategies

Lecture Lecture
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Mr. Luther Chipembere

Stellenbosch University

Workshop: Building Science Communication Capacity in Africa

Day 1 - 09h00 - 11h00

Workshop Workshop
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Mr. Naweed Khan

IBM Research Africa

The state of AI

Day 3 - 10h30 - 12h00

Lecture Lecture
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Mr. Ndivhuwo Nyase

IBM Research Africa

Quantum Machine Learning 4 Africa

Workshop Workshop
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Mr. Thapelo Maupa

Independent Researcher.

A friendly Introduction to the Mathematical Basics for Machine Learning.

Day 1 - 09h00 - 11h00

Workshop Workshop
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Ms Katherine Rabik

Beyond the Poster: Practical Presentation Skills for Researchers

Day 1 - 09h00 - 11h00

Workshop Workshop
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Mzwandile Mhlongo

Standard Bank

Building AI Agentic Workflows from Scratch: A Hands-On Tutorial on RAG, Text2SQL, & Tools

Workshop Workshop
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Ntshuxeko Confidence Mathebula

Opti-Num Solutions

Intelligent Systems Engineering: Bridging AI and Simulation

Lecture Lecture
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Prof Marlene Holmner

University of Pretoria

Ethics in the Age of AI: Balancing Privacy, Accuracy, and Access

Day 2 - 13h30 - 14h30

Keynote Keynote
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Prof. Francesco Petruccione

National Institute for Theoretical and Computational Sciences (NITheCS), Stellenbosch University

Quantum Foundations: From Qubits to Intelligent Algorithms

Day 4 - 09h00 - 10h00

Keynote Keynote
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Prof. Mandla Gwetu

Stellenbosch University

Fundamentals of ML

Day 2 - 10h30 - 12h00

Fundamentals Fundamentals
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Prof. Pius Owolawi

Tshwane University of Technology

Edge AI for Agriculture: Towards a Cognitive Farming

Day 2 - 09h00 - 10h00

Keynote Keynote
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Ruan de Kock

InstaDeep

A friendly introduction to the Mathematical Basics for Machine Learning.

Day 1 - 09h00 - 11h00

Workshop Workshop
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Saheed Jimoh

University of Kwazulu Natal

Evaluation of Wind Speed Regime Variability and Model Fit Performance Using Multi-Component Weibull Mixture Functions for Energy Potential Estimation

Day 2 - 15h00 - 16h30

Lecture Lecture
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Samuel Oladejo

University of Johannesburg / Xero

ForecastRL: Neural Time Series Forecasting Integration with Risk-Aware Deep Reinforcement Learning for Financial Trading

Day 3 - 10h30 - 12h00

Lecture Lecture
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Shane Josias

Stellenbosch University

Multimodal base distributions in conditional flow matching generative models

Day 2 - 10h30 - 12h00

Lecture Lecture
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Stefan Dominicus

Takealot

Recommender Systems at Takealot.com

Day 3 - 10h30 - 12h00

Lecture Lecture
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Stefan Strydom

Pocket Polyglot Mzansi: Machine Translation for Local Languages on the Edge

Day 2 - 15h00 - 16h30

Lecture Lecture
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Stephan Middleton

Von Seidels

The Patent Landscape for Inventions relating to Artificial Intelligence

Day 2 - 10h30 - 12h00

Lecture Lecture
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Stuart Reid

NOSIBLE

Indexing the whole web

Day 1 - 13h00 - 14h00

Keynote Keynote
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Tegan Green

UX designer exploring the implications of AI for human well-being

Lecture Lecture
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Thato Angelo Serage

Forecasting South African consumer price index using statistical learning models

Day 2 - 15h00 - 16h30

Lecture Lecture
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Tony Onazi Oche

University of Pretoria/ AI Safety South Africa

Real-Life AI Incidents as a Testing Tool for AI Safety Policies in South Africa

Lecture Lecture
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Wiida Fourie-Basson

Stellenbosch University

Workshop: Building Science Communication Capacity in Africa

Day 1 - 09h00 - 11h00

Workshop Workshop
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Zara Schroeder

Research ICT Africa

Unconsented: The Gendered Cost of Generative AI in the Digital Age

Day 2 - 10h30 - 12h00

Lecture Lecture