Head of Makerere Artificial Intelligence lab Wins Grant

Dr. Joyce Nakatumba-Nabende, the Head of the Makerere University Artificial Intelligence lab and a Lecturer, Department of Computer Science, School of Computing & IT, College of Computing and Information Sciences, has won a Grand Challenges Explorations grant, an initiative funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Dr. Nakatumba-Nabende will use artificial intelligence to mine data from local village radio stations to generate timely data on crop pests and diseases. The project will analyze local broadcasts to generate crop surveillance data that is linked to the local community situation. The results will be combined with photographs of diseased crops provided by local farmers and used to train machine learning models to ultimately extract radio information in multiple languages and with diverse accents. This project will provide near real-time crop surveillance data and allow for timely responses to threats.

For more information please visit https://gcgh.grandchallenges.org/grant/using-radio-and-image-data-surveillance