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SUMMARY: IBM research in Africa: an overview of the projects helping to bu
 ild Africa’s future and career opportunities for Mathematicians - Dr Kam
 al Bhattacharya\, Dr Osamuyimen Stewart and Dr Meenal Pore
DTSTART:20151020T160000Z
DTEND:20151020T170000Z
UID:TALK61930@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Tina Jost
DESCRIPTION:Abstract:  Africa is poised to become a leading source of inno
 vation in a variety of sectors\, with an expected growth rate of 7% annual
 ly over the next 20 years. IBM recognizes the huge potential impact of res
 earch and smarter systems in helping to build Africa’s future\, hence th
 e lab is focused on technology applications in a range of industries at th
 e core of Africa’s growth. Employing some of the best scientists from ar
 ound the world and is partnering with universities around the world to dev
 elop and hire top talent.   There are career opportunities for Masters\, P
 hDs and Post Docs.  Dr Kamal Bhattacharya (Director\, IBM Research – Afr
 ica) and Dr Osamuyimen Stewart (Chief Scientist\, IBM Research – Africa)
  will give an introduction to IBM Research – Africa\, and an overview of
  teams and projects at the Nairobi and Johannesburg.  The research areas i
 nclude:\n\nActive Learning\, : Acquiring high-quality labelled data in res
 ource-constrained settings is difficult.  Active Learning can be used to d
 rastically reduce the cost of gaining insights from noisy background data.
   For example\, which household should be targeted in a healthcare survey 
 based on the roof top composition of the dwelling estimated from satellite
  imagery?\n\n \n\nTransfer Learning: Africa is an incredibly diverse conti
 nent and even the most successful innovation in one country may have very 
 low performance in other regions.  Transfer learning provides systematic a
 pproaches that allow researchers to re-use informative data streams for ad
 aptation to a new task\, new demographic\, or both.  For example\, based o
 n a supervised classification model\, we predict that a particular cell ph
 one user in Kenya will be able to repay a micro-loan - will this model wor
 k in Nigeria as well?\n\nObject recognition: Given the proliferation of af
 fordable imaging technologies\, from drone aerial imaging to phone cameras
 \, how can such technologies be used to lower the cost and improve the qua
 lity of evidence-based policy?  For example\, given the incredible rate of
  growth of Africa’s cities\, how can city planners use drone imagery to 
 better understand changes in population density and socioeconomic status o
 f communities\, and hence forecast the demand for various public services?
 \n\nDistributed Computing: Mobile phones are the already-present incarnati
 on of IoT in Africa.  Harnessing this data requires new approaches that ca
 n handle society-scale data.  IBM is globally investing in Apache® Spark
 ™ to create advances in large scale data processing. 
LOCATION:CMS Meeting Room 4
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