Dr. Neema Mduma

Neema Mduma is a lecturer at the Nelson Mandela African Institution of Science and Technology (NM-AIST). She has PhD majoring in Machine Learning from NM-AIST. Neema is passionate about education especially girls, and during her PhD studies she developed a machine learning model called BakiShule which aims at preventing students from dropping out of school. Neema’s efforts has been recognized and she has received various awards, prizes and recognitions. Most recently, Neema received award from L’Oréal-UNESCO for Women in Science as 20 Young Talents in Sub-Saharan Africa (2020). Also, Neema has been able to travel to different places and present her findings in scientific machine learning gatherings such as Women in Machine Learning, Neural Information Processing Systems and Black in AI Workshops at Long Beach, California, USA in December 2017, Montreal, Canada in June 2018, and Vancouver, Canada in December 2019; Data Science workshop in Nyeri, Kenya in June 2018, and Addis Ababa, Ethiopia in June 2019; Deep Learning Indaba in Cape Town, South Africa in September 2018, and Nairobi, Kenya in August 2019. Additionally, Neema is also served as Co-Principal Investigator (PI) in AI4D Innovation Grants (2020) and currently, she is a PI of two projects: Lacuna Fund in Agriculture project (2020) in collaboration with Makerere University in Uganda, Namibia University of Science and Technology in Namibia and KaraAgro AI in Ghana and Data Science Africa project (2021) which aims on building capacity for Masters students in the field of Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence.