AMLD Africa: a three-day digital event to discuss the application of machine learning on the African continent

27 août 2021

The Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) will organize AMLD Africa, an event that will take place from September 2 to 4. Thisis the fifth edition of a series of conferences over three days around machine learning applied to the development of the African continent. This will be the first time that the “Applied Machine Learning Days” will be dedicated to Africa.

EPFL organizes an event around AI and machine learning in Africa

The fifth edition of “Applied Machine Learning Days” tends to be internationalized by focusing for 2021 on Africa and the concrete and positive impact of AI and more precisely of machine learning on the continent in sectors such as agriculture, health, industry, environment, social, education, etc. Thus, the event will be an opportunity to discuss the application of machine learning and artificial intelligence in innovation and sustainable development of African countries;

Over three days, from 2 to 4 September, a series of conferences will be proposed with several keynotes, talks and also workshops. The event will be free access, totally virtual and everything will be proposed in English. Open to all, these three days of conferences target the academic world as well as the private and public sector. AMLD Africa was made possible thanks to partners such as Excellence in Africa of EPFL – EXAF and Google.

The program of the fifth edition of Applied Machine Learning Days

Below, you will find the list of discussion sessions and workshops by theme that will take place during the event:

Health and AI – on September 2 between 9:30 and 11:20 a.m. with Aisha Walcott Bryant, Research Manager for IBM Research Africa, Mustapha HAMDI, Professor at INSAT, Magali Cattin, doctoral student at EPFL, Emilian Popa, CEO and founder of Ilara Health, Eduard Booty, CEO and founder of reach 52 and Valeria De Luca, data scientist for Novartis.
Environment and AI – September 2 from 2:50 to 6:15 pm with Stefano Ermon, Assistant Professor at Stanford, Engineer Bainomugisha, Associate Professor at Makerere University Galina Alova, Energy Transition & Sustainable Finance at Oxford University, Ihsane Gryech, PhD student at Rabat International University, Abigail, Annkah, Research Software Engineer for Google, Alejandro Yousef Da Silva, Optimization & Analytics / Software Engineer for Schneider Electric, Mohamed Makni, CEO and co-founder of DeepFlows.co, Shinez Chalabi, Industry Manager at Google MENA, Rosina Norton, Head of Data Science for M-KOPA and Elizabeth Nyeko, CEO and Founder of Modularity Grid.
Agriculture and AI – September 2 from 11:30am to 2:40pm with Benji Meltzer, CTO of Aerobotics, Catherine Nakalembe, Research Associate and Professor at the University of Maryland, Aisha Raheem, Vision Director for Farmz2U, Ivan Zvonkov, ML Engineer for NASA, Hadia Samil, Internal Researcher for MILA Institute, Gabriel Tseng, ML Engineer for NASA, Adam Adramson, CEO of Farmster, and Bernard Wright, Director of Management for Fieldy.
NLP and AI – September 3rd from 9:30am to 11:15am with Karim Beguir, CEO and co-founder of InstaDeep, Hatem Haddad, CTO and co-founder of iCompass, Thierno Ibrahima Diop, data scientist for Baamtu, Abdoulaye Diack, Research Program Manager for Google AI, Lauren Newbould, data scientist for Rural Senses and Nourchene Ferchichi, AI Research Engineer for InstaDeep.
Community and AI – September 3rd from 11:30am to 5:30pm with Kamal Bhattacharya, Professor at IU International University, Amit Josh, Professor of AI and Strategy Marketing for IMD, Carolina Odman, Associate Professor at the University of the Western Cape, Anitha Wijayakumar, technical project manager for Google Brain and TensorFlow, Rachid Guerraoui, professor at EPFL, Houcemeddine Turki, assistant researcher at the University of Sfax, Elyes Manai, ML consultant and developer, Siobhan Mackenzie Hall, PhD student at the University of Oxford, Chance Coughenour, program manager for Google Arts & Culture, Wei Xiao, professor at the University of Geneva, and Culture, Wei Xiao, professor at Santa Clara University, and AI specialist for NVIDIA, Walid Daou, head of AI for OCP and Celina Lee, CEO of Zindi.
Social and AI – September 3 from 5:30-6:25 p.m. with Kimessha Paupamah, solutions architect for AWS, Kidist Amde Mekonnen, data science student at the University of Trento, and Moritz Besser, ML consultant for ASMSpotter.
The day of September 4 will be dedicated to workshops on several topics: machine learning, deep learning, data science, algorithms, NLP, modeling, recommendation systems, multi-agent systems, coding, etc.