The School aims to train researchers across South Africa in Scientific Computing, Data Science and Machine Learning. It offers daily lectures and tutorials, notes and exercises, and light snacks and refreshments. Qualifying students will also receive certificates.
Who can apply?
Talented students registered for a postgraduate degree
Researchers and professionals in industry
Final-year undergraduates planning to do postgraduate studies in 2026.
NOTE: a background in Python programming is required. After registering for the School, you will be emailed a link to a compulsory entrance test. The sooner you complete it, the sooner you’ll know if you qualify.
Optional preparation (if new to Python):
Take a free course: Python for Beginners (alison.com/course/python-for-beginners)
Attend a NITheCS Software Carpentry Workshop.
Where to attend
Attend at a the University of the Western Cape or other designated University locations in South Africa. Space is limited, so apply soon. Note, no accommodation or travel costs will be covered.
UKUDLA invites academic staff from the University of Pretoria, University of Mpumalanga, University of the Western Cape, Lilongwe University of Agriculture and Natural Resources, and the University of Hohenheim to express their interest in serving as main or co-supervisors for PhD researchers affiliated with UKUDLA. Furthermore, each potential supervisor is also invited to indicate a specific research topic that falls within the broader UKUDLA research clusters.
About UKUDLA
UKUDLA is a collaborative, transdisciplinary initiative committed to training the next generation of research leaders at the intersection of data science and food systems in Africa. The network supports capacity strengthening through multi-institutional partnerships, dynamic training opportunities, and a strong focus on impactful, applied research.
Who Should Consider Applying?
Academic staff whose work intersects with: • Food systems (agriculture, nutrition, economics, food security, rural development, environmental sciences) • Data science (statistics, artificial intelligence, machine learning, informatics, geospatial analysis) Researchers at all career stages are welcome, but early-career scholars are particularly encouraged to apply.
Benefits of Participation
By participating, supervisors will: • Contribute to shaping the next generation of African research leaders • Engage in multi-institutional collaborations across five partner universities • Expand their own skills through ongoing training in data science and transdisciplinary research • Support research addressing real-world challenges in African food systems
Institutions Involved: University of Pretoria, University of Mpumalanga, University of the Western Cape, Lilongwe University of Agriculture and Natural Resources, and the University of Hohenheim
Access the Reference call document at the link below
If you previously submitted an expression of interest during the earlier call, please resubmit using the updated form to include your proposed research topic.
The eResearch Office at UWC is a division under the Deputy Vice-Chanellor Research and Innovation that promotes the use of information technology to enable fast and high impact research. Part of its mission is to drive and coordinate advanced uses of data-driven approaches to multi-, inter- and trans-disciplinary research in a dynamic environment for skills development and academic growth. A postdoctoral fellowship position is available for an outstanding candidate to undertake cutting-edge research in the development of data technology for sustainable food systems. The fellow will be awarded a tax-free fellowship for up to 2 years with opportunities for academic and personal development.
Prerequisites:
The prospective candidate should be a holder of a doctoral degree obtained within the past five years in the field related to Natural, Computer, Mathematical or Agricultural Sciences. The applicant should have interest and/or experience in modelling data of biological systems, be familiar with the concepts of sustainability within food systems and able to work without supervision, as well as in a team.
The successful candidate will be involved in the following roles:
– Conducting research in the area of data science applied to food systems – Develop original research and publication – Involvement in sourcing research grants – Science engagement – May be requested to assist with various activities that support the eResearch agenda for the University. – Mentor and support postgraduate students.
Interested candidates can send their CV and motivation letter to Dr Frederic Isingizwe at fisingizwe@uwc.ac.za or to Prof Clement Nyirenda at cnyirenda@uwc.ac.za.
Open to ALL – bothEducators and Students!!, regardless of their status with AWS Academy! This is a 2-part event. Registrants may attend one or both events as desired:
Session 1 – Introduction to Prompt Engineering
Duration – 2.5 Hours Language – English Prerequisites – None Dates/Times/Registration Links: Friday, 18 October 2024 – 08:00-10:30 am Local Time UK
Learn basic computing skills to conduct research Software Carpentry aims to help researchers get their work done in less time and with less pain. This hands-on online workshop covers basic concepts and tools, including programme design, version control, data management and task automation. Participants will be encouraged to help one another and apply their learning to their own research problems.
Who should attend? Graduate students and other researchers. You don’t need any previous knowledge of the tools that will be presented at the workshop.
Venue Training takes place online. The instructors will send you the information you need to connect to this workshop.
Requirements You will need access to a computer with a Mac, Linux, or Windows operating system (not a tablet, Chromebook, etc.) on which you have administrative rights. You will also need an up-to-date browser and a few specific software packages installed – see here: https://bit.ly/3LLL0Dp.
Questions? If you have a query, please email thuthukile.khumalo@nithecs.ac.za or visit https://bit.ly/3LLL0Dp.
The Centre for High Performance Computing (CHPC) and the National Institute for Theoretical and Computational Sciences (NITheCS) are organizing a coding summer school that offers introductions to Foundations of Theoretical and Computational Sciences on topics such as Data Visualization, Data Analysis, Modelling and Simulation, Stochastic Methods, Machine Learning and Software Management.
A basic programming course that introduces participants to Linux (Ubuntu) command line and bash scripting, and the Python programming language will be given as a foundational tool for the school.
Students registered for Honours, Masters and PhD studies as well as postdoc fellows, in South Africa are eligible to apply and the attendance is free of charge. The school will take on a physical form at various university locations around the country, therefore participants will be required to attend one of the university locations.
The University of the Western Cape will provide one of these locations on its campus, and all interested candidates are encouraged to apply.
Course content
Daily lectures and interactive tutorials
Moodle used as the learning management environment
PDF notes, exercises, and YouTube videos provided
Zoom used for live streaming
Slack used as official communication medium
Prizes awarded to select students
Requirements and Registration
Participants are encouraged to bring their own laptops but where it is not possible, the organizers might assist to access an on-site computer. No programming skills and basic Linux knowledge are required, although that would be an advantage. Applications can be done at this registration link and more information on the can be obtained here.
Important dates
Closing date for registration: Saturday, 31 December 2022
Notification of successful candidates: by 16 January 2023
School start and orientation: Monday, 30 January 2023
AfricaOSH is an organisation that aims to inspire African makers, and is focused on open source scientific tools and hardware. They seeks to promote and provide a platform for innovation and creation in Africa, and hold annual events.
The 2022 annual summit theme is Growing the Do-It-Yourself & Do-It-Together (DIY/DIT) Culture for Community Transformation : a focus on Open Health, and promises to be insightful, educative, innovative and fun. The event will be hosted by MboaLab and take place from 29 September-1 October in Yaounde, Cameroon. Read more about it here.
SANBI are currently teaching a course on SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) bioinformatics to visitors from public health labs across Africa. The course is taking place at the University of the Western Cape from the 23 to 27 May 2022, and is using ilifu, South Africa’s big data infrastructure for data-intensive research.
Africa CDC aims to strengthen capacities and capabilities at public health institutions in Africa in order to detect and respond quickly and effectively to disease threats and outbreaks. They have data-driven interventions and programmes, and SANBI has been working with Africa CDC since 2018.
In 2020, the Africa CDC launched its Institute of Pathogen Genomics (IPG), which has been at the forefront of supporting SARS-CoV-2 sequencing on the African continent. SANBI is one of the specialist centres assisting Africa CDC in its work developing pathogen genomics and bioinformatics. As part of this role, they are running a week-long course on SARS-CoV-2 sequence analysis for people from public health labs in 9 African countries – Morocco (Institut Pasteur du Maroc), Egypt (Central Public Health Laboratory), Ethiopia (Ethiopian Public Health Institute), Uganda (Center Public Health Institute), Kenya (National Public Health Laboratory), Senegal (Institut Pasteur de Dakar), Zambia (Zambian National Public Health Institute), Ghana (Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research) and South Africa (National Institute for Communicable Diseases). Nigeria (Nigeria CDC) and DRC (Institut National de Recherche Biomédicale) could not attend in-person, but are participating online.
Back row (L-R): Ziphozakhe Mashologu, Wael Saif, Harris Onywera, Peter van Heusden, Alan Christoffels, Leonard Kingwara, Ayitewala Alisen, Abebe Negeri, Abdelmajid Eloualid, Amadou Diallo. Front row (L-R) Susan Alicia Fernol, Michelle Lowe, Annie Chan, Tracey Calvert-Joshua, Quaneeta Mohktar, Francis Ahiakpah, Moussa Diagne. Not present: Mpanga Kasonde, Akil Prince, Emmanuel Lokilo .
SANBI have been ilifu partners since its inception, and Peter van Heusden, Senior Bioinformatician at SANBI, is one of the organisers of the workshop. He says that participants have found it to be “an excellent resource to support public health bioinformatics”. ilifu is a node in the South African national data infrastructure which enables South African researchers to be leaders in the strategic science domains of astronomy and bioinformatics.
Course participants working on data analysis in SANBI’s Aaron Klug seminar room, 23 May 2022.
The training relies on cloud infrastructure provided by Ilifu – each lab gets their own installation of SANBI’s SARS-CoV-2 Workbench to work on, and gets hands-on experience with uploading data, doing data analysis and visualising their results. While the current training has focused on SARS-CoV-2, the discussions have ranged across a number of other infectious diseases that these public health labs are responding to: HIV, TB, hepatitis, malaria, influenza and other pathogens. SANBI sees this training as feeding into Africa CDC’s efforts to build a Community of Practice in public health bioinformatics and genomic surveillance.
A training opportunity for data science and machine learning is available and registration closes on 25 May.
Makerere University School of Public Health (MakSPH) in Kampala, Uganda, is working in partnership with four other African universities to research the COVID-19 response in Africa. Through the collaboration, a community of practice (COP) has been establised. It is aimed at developing the capacity of African institutions to prepare, analyse and respond to disease epidemics successfully.
As part of the COP, and in partnership with IBM Research Africa (IBMRA) scientists, who have expertise in artificial intelligence (AI), data science, and machine learning, the project has organised a capacity-building opportunity on data science and machine learning.
Participants interested in or with a background in data science, artificial intelligence, machine learning and cloud computing are encouraged to register. There is no minimum skill requirement aside from computer literacy.
Topics that will be covered include analysing the impact of COVID-19 on essential health services using time series analysis; learning from COVID-19 models to support what-if scenario analysis; and intervention planning and descriptive statistics to analyse NPIs implemented in African countries.
The training will be conducted online through Webex, with an expected engagement of about 2 hours every week. Facilitation will be in both English and French, and the programme will run until October 2022.
DARA Big Data (Development in Africa through Radio Astronomy), in partnership with the Office of Astronomy for Development (OAD), IDIA (Inter-University Institute for Data Intensive Astronomy) and SARAO (South African Radio Astronomy Observatory) is hosting a free 3-day Africa Women in Data Science online event. The event will coincide with International Women’s Day 2022 and will also mark the one year anniversary of the publication of the SARAO Women in Data Science report.
The event organisers hope to help build a thriving African community of female data scientists and promote skills development for women who are interested data science careers. Registration for the event closes January 31 2022.
The event will take place from 8-10 March 2022, which coincides with International Women’s Day. It aims to increase African women’s participation in the 4th Industrial Revolution (4IR) to build a prosperous, resilient Africa of the future. The integral role of African women for the 4IR will be discussed and various opportunities will be showcased for young women hoping to get into the field of data science.
Africa Women in Data Science is free to attend and will be split into a conference on Day 1 (March 8) and a hackathon on Days 2 and 3 (March 9-10). The conference will feature inspiring female panel discussions, presentations from leading industry experts and question and answer sessions. Day 1 is open to anyone across Africa with a keen interest in data science. To register for the conference, only complete the first section of the registration form.
