The Speakers
Raesetje Sefala
Raesetje Sefala is DAIR’s first research fellow. She uses computer vision, data science, and machine learning techniques to explore research questions with a societal impact. Her current research uses satellite imagery to study the legacy of spatial apartheid in South Africa. She holds a master's degree in computer science from the University of the Witwatersrand, and is the co-founder of Women In Computational Science Research (WiCSR), a community that empowers and encourages women’s growth and participation in the computational sciences. Raesetje’s work has been the recipient of the best poster presentation prize at the 2018 Deep Learning Indaba, and she is also the recipient of the Data Science for Social Good Fellowship and the Sasol Inzalo Foundation Scholarship.
Dr. Ron Eglash
Dr. Ron Eglash is an ethno-mathematician and a professor in the Stamps School of Art & Design at the University of Michigan. Broadly, Eglash studies how math and culture intersect, as well as general race and ethnicity issues in science and technology. He aims to challenge the narrative that ethnic minority architecture is "disorganized" or "primitive"; through his research, he has shown that many aspects of African design — in architecture, art, and even hair braiding — are based on perfect fractal patterns. His diverse research interests also include African and Native American Cybernetics and culturally-specific design tools that help children learn math.
Dr. Syed Mustafa Ali
Dr. Syed Mustafa Ali teaches at The Open University in Milton Keynes (UK) as a member of the Faculty of Mathematics, Computing, and Technology. Ali conducts transdisciplinary research investigating the interactions between race, religion, politics, ethics, and computing/ICT. Specifically, he examines and critically analyzes how colonial power harmfully affects our ways of seeing and thinking. Ali contributes to the robust academic-activist enterprise of decoloniality with his original idea of Islamic decoloniality. He has many well-researched papers, monographs, and articles covering his diverse interests, including decolonial computing.
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Ryan Robinson
Ryan Robinson is the founder and CEO of Conduit, a provider of hybrid cloud computing models that bring together large amounts of data to solve complex problems. He graduated from MIT with three majors: mechatronics, international humanities, and quantum engineering. While being a student at MIT, Robinson created his company with a dedication to using computers to create products that would solve the world's largest problems. At 22, Ryan was named in Forbes 30 under 30 for Conduit's work in solving real-world problems. He then raised +$1M for Conduit and lectured at MIT about quantum computing and cryptocurrency. Ryan has been featured in MIT News, American Inno, Boston Business Journal, Information Age, CNN, Moguldom, Forbes, and the World News.
Steven Kolawole
Steven Kolawole is a final year computer science undergraduate at the Federal University of Agriculture Abeokuta, Nigeria, with a passion for machine learning research. He currently leads research with ML Collective where his research focuses on resource-efficient machine learning in terms of computational resources and low-resource/limited labeled data.
Moreover, Steven is big on knowledge sharing via research, community mentorship and collective growth, open-source development, meetups facilitation, speakership, technical writing, and passionate about helping tech muggles find their feet.
