Low-Resource and High-Stakes Technology: Opportunities and Barriers
In this fireside chat, Elisa Schaeffer, D.Sc. (Tech.), Academic Director of Technology and Innovation and interim Academic Program Coordinator of Applied Cybersecurity at McGill SCS and Valerie Ndiweni, Career Advising and Transitions Service Manager at McGill SCS will host a conversation between two young professionals - Bonaventure F.P. Dossou and Kapinga Kalombo.
- Bonaventure is pursuing his doctorate at the Center for Research on Intelligent Machines at McGill University.
- Kapinga, a Project Coordinator at Cybereco, holds a B.A. in Political Science from McGill University and is currently in her final year of a master's degree in international Affairs.
The two will discuss their research, experiences, and expectations regarding what technology can contribute to humanity in settings that do not quite match the urban North American everyday life.
About Bonaventure F. P. Dossou
Bonaventure F. P. Dossou is pursuing his doctorate at the Center for Research on Intelligent Machines, McGill University. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Mathematics (Russia) and a Master of Science in Computer Science and Data Engineering (Germany). Previously, he worked as a researcher at the Mila Quebec AI Institute, Google Research, Roche Canada, and Modelis, to name but a few. Bonaventure is interested in natural language processing for African languages and machine learning for healthcare. He is actively working on the creation of linguistic datasets and technologies such as multilingual machine translation systems (like FFR, MMTAfrica), multilingual speech recognition systems (like Okwugbe), and large language
About Elisa Schaeffer, D.Sc. (Tech.), Academic Director of Technology and Innovation, McGill School of Continuing Studies
Elisa is a Finnish mathematical computer scientist with a keen interest in computational intelligence. Her research jumps around the potential applications of graph theory and machine learning, touching areas such as social sciences, medicine, economics, and forestry. She is passionate about digital learning, real-time and asynchronous, and an early adopter of emerging software and hardware solutions to facilitate teaching and research, especially open-source solutions.
About Kapinga Kalombo, B.A., Project Coordinator at Cybereco
Kapinga Kalombo holds a B.A. in Political Science from McGill University and is currently in her final year of a master's degree in international Affairs, Cyber Security at King's College London. She has five years of experience in research and project/program management, having worked as a research assistant in the field of artificial intelligence, as a partnership coordinator for a startup and as a program coordinator for an NPO. Her research interests are mainly focused on the use of AI in warfare, and the integration of human-machine teaming in such settings.
About Valerie Ndiweni, Career Advising and Transitions Services Manager, McGill School of Continuing Studies
Valerie is a multi-passionate career and business strategist driven to leverage her diverse education and management experience to serve as a catalyst for positive impact. She uses her skillset in career development, marketing, and operations management to lead impactful initiatives that support and empower a diverse community of learners and professionals. She sincerely enjoys hearing about and assessing client and students' needs while advising them to develop career strategies with which to navigate the ever-changing world of work.