AIRU student, Nicholas Leisegang, has won the best paper award at the recent JELIA conference, held in Georgia, along with co-authors Prof Tommie Meyer and Prof Ivan Varzinczak. It is an immense honour for a student to win this award. Held at Kutaisi International University (KIU), the conference selected 47 peer-reviewed research papers from a highly …
Ephraim Adongo, a master’s student at the University of Cape Town (UCT) and member of AIRU, has been selected to attend the Mandela Institute for Development Studies (MINDS) Leadership Development Program (LDP) taking place in Cairo, Egypt, from the 25th to the 29th of August 2025. The leadership development programme aims to equip MINDS scholars …
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Prof Tommie Meyer was honoured with the 2025 SAICSIT Pioneer award at the organisation’s 46th Annual conference that was held in Umhlanga from July 17th to 18th, 2025. Founded in 1982, the South African Institute for Computer Scientists and Information Technologists (SAICSIT) aims to further the study and application of computer science. Prof Meyer, a Computer …
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Professor Tommie Meyer, deputy-director of the Artificial Intelligence Research Unit (AIRU) at the University of Cape Town (UCT), has been awarded a prestigious South African Research Chairs Initiative (SARChI) Chair in Symbolic Artificial Intelligence. The Department of Science and Innovation (DSI)/National Research Foundation (NRF), recognizes Professor Meyer’s contributions to the field of AI and supports …
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For Artificial Intelligence (AI) to become more reliable and adaptable, it must develop a form of “understanding” of the world that allows it to make sound decisions. Dr Jesse Heyninck, an Honorary Research Associate in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Cape Town (UCT), has his sights on developing a framework that integrates symbolic and …
Congratulations to AIRU researchers, Dr Irene Nandutu and Mbithe Nzomo, who are among the 30 laureates of the L’Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science Sub-Saharan Africa Young Talents Award. They were awarded at a colourful ceremony in Cotonou, Benin, on 10th December 2024, attended by 250 distinguished guests including eminent scientists and prominent figures from across …
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Dr Irene Nandutu, a postdoctoral research fellow working with the Neuroscience Institute and the AI Research Unit at the University of Cape Town, won the 2024 Kambule Doctoral Award at the Deep Learning Indaba, which was held from 1 to 7 September at the University Amadou Makhtar Mbow, Dakar, Senegal. The award recognises the legacy …
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June 2024 — Tommie Meyer, deputy-director of AIRU, has been elected as a Fellow of the African Academy of Sciences (AAS) in recognition of his excellence in the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI). The AAS is a pan-African organisation dedicated to pursuing excellence by funding and recognising transformative research across the continent. Fellowship recognition is …
March 2024 — Mbithe Nzomo, PhD candidate in Computer Science at the University of Cape Town and member of the Artificial Intelligence Research Unit (AIRU), recently attended the 38th AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-24) which was held in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada from 20th to 27thFebruary 2024. She presented her PhD research on a hybrid AI framework …
Ameerah Allie a Masters at the University of Cape Town and member of AIRU has been awarded the Science Faculty Master’s Equity Scholarship for 2024-2025. Ameerah became interested in logics and their application after a lecture from her eventual supervisor, Professor Tommie Meyer. “I’ve decided to pursue this into my Master’s, looking at defeasible reasoning. In the …
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