Data Science Nigeria opens Artificial Intelligence Hub in UNILAG
Data Hub Nigeria will be unveiling the first phase of its Data Science Community Centre and Artificial Intelligence Hub for cross-industry and academic research by 11 am on Friday, 8th of June, 2018 at the University of Lagos, Akoka.
The Hub will be officially launched with the Vice-Chancellor of UNILAG, Professor Oluwatoyin Temitayo Ogundipe, and Dr. Uyi Stewart, Global Development Strategy, Data & Analytics for Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in attendance.
Data Science Nigeria is committed to supporting Nigerian students and encouraging them to turn their academic research into innovative start-ups or social enterprises aligned with millennial developmental goals. Data Science Nigeria has an interest in solving local problems in the fields of health, education, agriculture and financial inclusion.
The Hub will be the center for data science enthusiasts and experts to associate, learn, share ideas and participate in local and international projects. DSN also plans to use the Hub for face-to-face masterclasses, industry meet-ups, and dial-in conferences with its over 100+ mentors from across the globe. Data science practitioners can also participate in many industry data projects as interns, freelancers or experts at the Hub.
The Hub features modern data collection tools including biometric readers, an AWS AI DeepLens Camera, Google Clips, Intel Movidius Neural Stick, GPS tracking devices, Bionic Nature Observing Device, Internet-of-Things suite and many others.
During the launching which will be held tomorrow, the hub will also be announcing its successful learning Bootcamp, titled, Deep Learning Nigeria, to be held from October 10 to 15, 2018. This will be a fully residential, all-expense-paid learning camp focused on deepening financial inclusion through the use of machine/deep learning for credit risk scoring, identity image/voice authentication, ATM point-of-presence location optimization using geospatial data, and biometrics/voice analytics.
This will be complemented with a first-of-its-kind Inter-Campus Machine Learning Competition to recruit the best 75 students for a Data Science Bootcamp, with an opportunity to win 1 million Naira through participation in Kaggle competitions and Bootcamp quizzes.
Data Science Nigeria, a non-profit foundation, is driven by its vision to accelerate Nigeria’s development through a solution-oriented application of machine learning to solve social/business problems and galvanize data science knowledge revolution, which can position Nigeria to become the outsourcing hub for international Data Science/Advanced Analytics/Big Data projects, with opportunity to access at least 1% share of the global big data and analytics market, valued at $150b in 2017 ($203b in 2020).
For more insights on what Data Science is, check this article on Wikipedia.