PROGRAMME

A YouTube livestream will be available on the day of the plenary session, please check the DARA Big Data Twitter page for details.

Plenary Session to be hosted on 8 March 2022 – Agenda
Tuesday 8 March 2022 coinciding with International Women’s Day
*Note that all times given are South African Standard Time (SAST)

10h00 – 10h15 Welcome and Introduction to Event:
Session Chair: Dr Bonita de Swardt (SARAO)
Officials Welcome:

  1. Dr. Amelia Marutle (South African Newton Fund Country Manager)
  2. Khaya Sishuba (Director – Bilateral Relations Europe and Gulf, South African Department of Science & Innovation Representative)

Empowering the youth in Africa – A young data scientists’ vision for increasing the participation of women and girls in STEM in Africa

Ms Potlako Makua (Business Integration & Solution Architecture | Data Engineering Manager, Accenture South Africa)

10h15 – 11h00 Keynote speaker

Kathleen Siminyu (Kiswahili Machine Learning Fellow, Mozilla)

Natural Language Processing: Ensuring Africa is not left behind in the transition to the 4IR – Africa’s language inclusion in technologies incorporating AI and ML

11h00 – 12h45 Panel Discussion
Session Chair: Associate Prof Carolina Ödman-Govender (IDIA, UWC)

  1. Dr Gugulethu Mabuza-Hocquet (CSIR Research Group Leader, Council for Scientific & Industrial Research, South Africa)
  2. Dr Araba Sey (Principal Research Scientist, University of Washington Information School)
  3. Dr Cherise Dunn (Co-founder and Chief Operating Officer of SOUTH AFRICA MAKES 3D4D Initiative)
  4. Dr Kagonya Awori (Senior Applied Scientist at Microsoft Africa Research Institute)
  5. Ms Anelda van der Walt (Director & Trainer, Talarify)
  6. Ms Potlako Makua (Business Integration & Solution Architecture | Data Engineering Manager, Accenture South Africa)

12h45 – 13h45 Lunch Break

13h45 – 14h45 Inspiring Women Data Scientists – sharing their journey
Session Chair: Dr Bonita de Swardt (SARAO)

  1. Dr Caroline Zabarowski (Chief Data Officer, Sonasoft, South Africa)
  2. Dr Celia Cintas (Research Scientist, IBM Research Africa, Kenya)
  3. Dr Nebiha Shafi (Data Scientist, Isazi Consulting)

14h45 – 15h00 Coffee / Tea Break

15h00 – 16h00 Inspiring Women Data Scientists – sharing their journey
Session Chair: Sydil Kupa (SARAO)

  1. Fanamby Randriamahenintsoa (ML Engineer, Voxcroft Analytics, Madagascar)
  2. Christine de Kock (PhD student in Computer Science & Technology, Cambridge University)
  3. Dr Zafiirah Hosenie (Postdoctoral Scientist at Microsoft Mixed Reality & AI Lab)

16h00 – 16h30 Closing session
Session Chair: Sydil Kupa (SARAO)

An overview of the Women in Data Science Hackathon – A sentiment analysis-based project using Twitter feeds to explore COVID-19

Dr Nikhita Madhanpall (DARA Big Data Fellow, Office of Astronomy for Development)