Programme

Get your dynamic programme here! Either choose a track or choose which parallels you want to assist, and then enter your email at the bottom of the page to receive a pdf of the programme!

• Sunday, 25 August

  Welcome Day and Background

• • • 09:00 - 18:00

    • • Arrivals in Nairobi and check-in

        Nairobi

    • 11:00 - 14:00

    • • Registration

        Nairobi

    • 12:00 - 14:00

    • • Parallel Refresher: Mathematics for Machine Learning

        EBR 30 Speaker: Dr Karim Beguir (InstaDeep)

        Learn the key concepts of probability and differential calculus necessary to gain the most from the rest of the week’s programme.

      • Parallel Refresher: Python Programming

        TBC Speaker: Practical Tutors

        A refresher course on programming in Python.

    • 14:00 - 16:00

    • • Parallel Practicals: Introduction to Machine Learning with Tensorflow

        SCC 008/SCC 003

      • Parallel Practicals: Build Your Own Tensorflow

        SCC 108 / SCC 103

      • Parallel Practicals: Hackathon Track

        SCC 203 / SCC 209

    • 16:00 - 16:30

    • • Break

        TBC

    • 16:30 - 18:30

    • • Parallel Deep Learning Fundamentals I

        EBR 30 Speaker: Dr Pashmina Cameron (Microsoft)

        A tutorial on the basics of Deep Learning. Will also be useful for the code session on Monday.

      • Parallel Introduction to Bayesian Analysis

        EBR 100 Speaker: Dr Ulrich Paquet (DeepMind)

      • Parallel Optimisation for Deep Learning

        EBR 432 Speaker: Dr Willie Brink (Stellenbosch Univ)

        Basics of optimisation for covex and non-convex functions. Will cbe useful for the practical session on Monday.

    • 18:30 - 19:00

    • • Transfer to Evening Welcome Event

        TBC

    • 19:00 -

    • • Evening Welcome Event

        TBC

• Monday, 26 August

  Strengthening Foundations

• • • 07:00 - 08:30

    • • Registration and Morning Coffee

        Chill Zone

    • 08:30 - 09:15

    • • Indaba Organisers and Host Welcome

        SCZ 39 Speakers: Kenyattu Univ. VC, Prof. Paul Wainaina, Prof. Bitange Ndemo, Kathleen Siminyu, Ulrich Paquet

    • 09:15 - 10:30

    • • Keynote: Keynote I

        SCZ 39 Dr Aisha Walcott-Bryant (IBM)

    • 10:30 - 11:00

    • • Break

        Chill Zone

    • 11:00 - 13:00

    • • Parallel Practicals: Deep Feedforward Networks

        SCC 008 / SCC 003

      • Parallel Practicals: Optimisation for Deep Learning

        SCC 108 / SCC 103

      • Parallel Practicals: Hackathon Track

        SCC 203 / SCC 209

    • 13:00 - 14:30

    • • Lunch Break

        Chill Zone

    • 14:30 - 16:00

    • • Keynote: Leveraging AI to Accelerate Discovery in Life Science and Deliver Precision

        SCZ 39 Prof. Abdoulaye Baniro Diallo (Univ. of Montreal)

    • 16:00 - 16:30

    • • Break

        Chill Zone

    • 16:30 - 18:30

    • • Parallel Convolutional Models

        SCZ 39 Speakers: to be updated

        Introduction to convolutional networks for image classification and spatial data.

      • Parallel Generative Models

        EBR 30 Speaker: Adji Boussi Dieng (Columbia University)

        An introduction to generative models, variational inference and generative adversarial networks.

      • Parallel AI in Kenya

        EBR 100 Speakers: Prestone Adie and others

        A session to explore the approach and use of AI in Kenya

      • Parallel Data Science

        EBR 432 Speakers: Victor Akinwande, Nyalleng Moorosi and others

    • 19:00 -

    • • (Signup required/By invitation) Indaba Women in Machine Learning Time

        KUCC Hosted in partnership with Microsoft. With Tempest van Schaik, Pashmina Cameron, Adji Bousso Dieng, Grace Bomu

• Tuesday, 27 August

  Going Deeper

• • • 07:30 - 08:30

    • • Morning Coffee

        Chill Zone

    • 08:30 - 09:00

    • • Awards: Kambule Dissertation Awards

        SCZ39 PhD and MSc winners: Marcellin Atemkeng, Hicham Hammouchi

    • 09:00 - 10:30

    • • Keynote: Keynote: Beyond Buzzwords: Innovation, Imagination, and Inequity in the 21st Century

        SCZ 39 Prof. Ruha Benjamin (Princeton Univ)

    • 10:30 - 11:00

    • • Break

        TBC

    • 11:00 - 13:00

    • • Parallel Practicals: Convolutional Networks

        SCC 08 / SCC03 Speakers: to be updated

      • Parallel Practicals: VAEs and GANs

        SCC 108 / SCC 103 Speakers: to be updated

      • Parallel Practicals: Hackathon Track

        SCC 203 / SCC 209 Speakers: to be updated

    • 13:00 - 14:30

    • • Lunch Break

        Chill Zone

    • 14:30 - 16:00

    • • Parallel Recurrent Neural Networks

        SCZ 39 Speaker: Avishkar Bhoopchand (DeepMind)

        An introduction to the principles and practice of recurrent neural networks and modelling sequential data.

      • Parallel Attention and Memory Architectures

        EBR 100 Speaker: Kris Sankaran (Montreal Institute for Learning Algorithms (MILA))

        Attentional and Memory system

      • Parallel Bayesian Optimisation and Hyperparameter Search

        EBR 30 Speaker: Dr Marc Deisenroth (Imperial College London)

        Introduction to black box search, and bayesian optimisation.

      • Parallel Reinforcement Learning Fundamentals

        EBR 432 Speaker: Dr Sekou Remy (IBM Research)

        Basic concepts in reinforcement learning.

    • 16:00 - 16:30

    • • Break

        Chill Zone

    • 16:30 - 18:30

    • • Parallel Practicals: Recurrent Neural Networks

        SCC 08 / SCC03

      • Parallel Practicals: Reinforcement Learning

        SCC 108 / SCC 103

      • Parallel Practicals: Hackathon Track

        SCC 203 / SCC 209

    • 19:00 - 20:00

    • • (Optional/No signup) Developing Better Presentation Skills

        SCZ 39 Speakers: Daniela Massiceti and Laura Seville

• Wednesday, 28 August

  Celebrating Research Across Africa

• • • 08:30 - 09:30

    • • Keynote: Seeking Research Impact at the Grassroots - The Role of AI

        SCZ 39 Speaker: Dr Ciira wa Maina (Dedan Kimathi Univ)

    • 09:30 - 10:30

    • • Symposium Session Spotlight Talks I

        SCZ 39 IndabaX Representatives

    • 10:30 - 11:00

    • • Break

        Chill Zone

    • 11:00 - 11:30

    • • Invited Talk: Enhancing E-learning using Artificial Intelligence Techniques

        SCZ 39 Speaker: Dr. Maina Elizaphan Muuro (Kenyatta University)

    • 11:30 - 12:45

    • • Symposium Session Spotlight Talks II

        SCZ 39

    • 12:45 - 13:00

    • • Group Photo Outside SCZ

        SCZ 39

    • 13:00 - 14:30

    • • Lunch Break

        Chill Zone

    • 14:00 - 16:00

    • • Poster Session I

        EBR See website for allocations

    • 16:00 - 16:30

    • • Break

        Chill Zone

    • 16:30 - 18:30

    • • Poster Session II

        EBR See website for allocations

    • 19:30 - 20:30

    • • Mentoring: (Optional/No signup) Video lecture and hangout with Andrew Ng

        SCZ39 Speaker: Prof. Andrew Ng (deeplearning.ai)

    • 20:00 -

    • • Mentoring: (Signup required/By Invitation) Apple Mentoring Session

        KUCC Team from Apple

• Thursday, 29 August

  Parallel Tracks

• • • 07:30 - 08:30

    • • Morning Coffee

        Chill Zone

    • 08:30 - 09:30

    • • Awards: Maathai Impact Award

        SCZ 39 Winners: Dr Bayo Adekanmbi

    • 09:30 - 10:30

    • • Keynote: Reinforcement Learning for Optimizing Healthcare Decisions

        SCZ 39 Speaker: Prof. Finale Doshi-Velez (Harvard University)

    • 10:30 - 11:00

    • • Break

        Chill Zone

    • 11:00 - 13:00

    • • Parallel Natural Language Processing

        EBR 30 Speakers: Richard Socher (Salesforce), Vukosi Marivate (Univ of Pretoria), and others

        Two talks. Richard Socher on Multitask learning in NLP and DecaNLP. And Vukosi Marivate on NLP Challenges and opportunities on the continent.

      • Parallel Computer Vision I

        EBR 100 Speakers: Dr Manohar Paluri (FAIR), Dr Natalia Neverova (FAIR)

        Join us for a deep dive into everything computer vision: from cutting-edge research in 3D and video understanding to deploying computer vision at scale. Hear from experts at Facebook AI Research on how computer vision works in research, in deployment, and in the real-world!

      • Parallel Startups and Innovation I

        SCZ 39 Speakers: Dr Karim Beguir (InstaDeep), Stuart Reid

        Content to be updated.

      • Parallel Machine Learning in Production

        EBR 432 Speaker: Daniele Ormer

        Content to be updated.

    • 13:00 - 14:30

    • • Lunch Break

        Chill Zone

    • 14:30 - 16:00

    • • Parallel Computing, camera traps, and conservation: how can machine learning inform ecology?

        SCZ 39 Speakers: Dr. Meredith S. Palmer (Princeton University) and Stig Petersen (DeepMind)

        Content to be updated.

      • Parallel Write a Great Research Proposal II

        EBR 432 Speakers: Daniela Massiceti (Univ. of Oxford) and Dr Laura Sevilla (Univ. of Edinburgh)

        What is a research proposal? Why do I need one? What does a good one look like? Formulating your research ideas and writing a good proposal is an integral part of post-graduate study and beyond. Join us, a panels of ML experts, in an interactive session where we will give insights into how to make YOUR research proposal the best that it can be!

      • Parallel Datasets for African AI

        EBR 100 Speakers: Prof. Stefano Ermon (Stanford Univ/Atlas.io), and Rockefeller Foundation

      • Parallel Hackathon Track

        SCC 203 / SCC 209

    • 16:00 - 16:30

    • • Break

        TBC

    • 16:30 - 18:30

    • • Parallel Speech and Audio Processing

        EBR 30 Speakers: Jade Abott (RetroRabbit), Sebastian Ruder (DeepMind), Kathleen Siminyu (AI4D), Brian Muhia, Herman Kamper (Stellenbosch Univ)

        Jade Abott, Machine translation for African languages; Sebastian Ruder, Kathleen Siminyu, An exploration of Bantu languages through multi-lingual word embeddings; Brian Muhia, A visual exploration of concepts shared between related Bantu languages; Herman Kamper, (More than) speech recognition for low-resource languages

      • Parallel Computer Vision II

        EBR 100 Speakers: Dr Laura Sevilla (Univ. of Edinburgh), Panel: Dr Manohar Paluri (FAIR), Dr Natalia Neverova (FAIR), Dr Laura Sevilla (Univ. of Edinburgh), Daniela Massiceti (Univ. of Oxford; moderator)

        Join us for part II of our deep-dive into computer vision. Here, Dr Laura Sevilla will be talking about her research in computer vision applied to videos, specifically motion in videos and its applications to robotics. We will wrap up with an in-depth panel discussion on where computer vision is going next and what are the field’s biggest challenges.

      • Parallel Robotics

        EBR 432 Speaker: Dr Benjamin Rosman (Univ of the Witwatersrand)

        Content to be updated.

      • Parallel Machine Learning for Healthcare

        SCZ 39 Speakers: Prof. Delmiro Fernandes Reyes (UCL), Gilbert Lim (National University Singapore), Jonathan Gerrand (Univ of the Witwatersrand), Olivier Bent (Univ of Oxford)

        Content to be updated.

      • Parallel Hackathon Track

        SCC 203 / SCC 209

    • 19:30 - 20:30

    • • Mentoring: (Optional/No signup) Video lecture and hangout with Prof. Fei Fei Li

        SCZ 39 Speaker: Prof. Fei Fei Li (Stanford Univ)

• Friday, 30 August

  Closing

• • • 07:30 - 08:30

    • • Morning Coffee

        Chill Zone

    • 08:30 - 10:30

    • • Parallel Deep RL and Frontiers I

        EBR 100 Speakers: Dr Benjamin Rosman and others

        Content to be updated.

      • Parallel Machine learning in Resource Constrained Environments: Immediate Opportunities and Challenges

        EBR 30 Speakers: Sara Hooker (Google), Pete Warden (Google)

        Pete Warden talks about Why the Future of Machine Learning is Tiny

      • Parallel AI and Fairness I

        SCZ 39 Speakers: Dr Nazneen Fatema Rajani (Salesforce), Teki Akuetteh Falconer (Nsiah Akuetteh and Co.), Grace Mutung’u ( KICTANet)

        In Partnership with Unesco.

      • Parallel French-speakers in AI Unconference

        EBR 432 Speakers: Adji Dieng, Abdoulaye Diallo and others

        A way for Africans who speak French as their first language to connect. And to share ideas on support that they think would be most useful.

      • Parallel Hackathon Track

        SCC 203 / SCC 209

    • 10:30 - 11:00

    • • Break

        Chill Zone

    • 11:00 - 13:00

    • • Parallel Makers Session

        EBR 432 Instructors: Dr Ciira wa Maina (Dedan Kimathi University)

        Use actual hardware and build them to do the work of collectingdata using your own sensors, and then analysing them.

      • Parallel Deep Reinforcement Learning and Frontiers II

        EBR 100 Speakers: Dr Benjamin Rosman and others

        Content to be updated.

      • Parallel Startups and Innovation II

        EBR 30 Speakers: Dr Karim Beguir and Stuart Reid

        Content to be updated.

      • Parallel AI and Fairness

        SCZ 39 Speakers: Raymond Onouha (UNESCO), Josephine Miliza (Tunapanda Institute) Robert Muthuri (AI4D), Alex Comninos (AI4D)

        Part 2 of the half day workshop. Now looking at case studies in fairness.

      • Parallel Hackathon Track

        SCC 203 / SCC 209

    • 13:00 - 14:30

    • • Lunch Break

        Chill Zone

    • 14:30 - 16:00

    • • Keynote: The Future of Multitask Learning

        SCZ 39 Speaker: Dr Richard Socher (Salesforce)

    • 16:00 - 16:30

    • • Break

        Chill Zone

    • 16:30 - 18:00

    • • Keynote: Some new Insights On Transfer Learning

        SCZ 39 Speaker: Prof. Samory Kpotufe (Columbia University)

    • 18:00 - 18:30

    • • Awards: Prizes and Indaba Closing

        SCZ 39 Organisers and best posters

    • 18:30 - 19:00

    • • Transfer to Evening Closing Event

        TBC

    • 19:00 -

    • • Closing Event

        TBC