|
|
|
AIMS Celebrates Emerging Mathematical Leaders in Recognition of Achievement Ceremony |
|
| AIMS South Africa celebrated its prestigious Recognition of Achievement Ceremony on 11 July 2024 at the scenic Muizenburg campus in Cape Town. The event honoured the exceptional 2023-2024 intake students, enrolled through our world-class partner universities - the University of Cape Town, the University of the Western Cape, and Stellenbosch University. |
|
|
| These institutions have been vital in shaping and supporting AIMS South Africa since its inception, significantly contributing to a bright future for the mathematical sciences in Africa. |
| | |
|
|
|
The new generation of African talent bringing cutting-edge AI to scientific challenges |
|
|
|
| AIMS South Africa received international exposure with a post from Google DeepMind which was shared on social media channels. |
| | We are grateful to GoogleDeepMind for incredible support, and dozens of visiting lecturers and supervisors who share their time, energy and expertise to train very bright students. Then, of course, our students who show us every day what excellence really means! |
| | |
|
|
|
|
| | | The Structured Master’s students completed the following courses: An introduction to representation theory towards Conformal Field Theory (Nezhla Aghaei, University of Geneva) and Reinforcement Learning (Mehrdad Ghaziasgar, UWC). |
| | | The AI for Science Stream students completed Data Science for Particle Physics (James Keaveney, UCT) and Data Science for Particle Physics (Julia Gonski, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory Students are now busy with Ordinary Differential Equations (Fernando Pestana da Costa, Universidade Aberta) and GPUs (Mike Giles, University of Oxford). |
| |
|
| | | Students also went on an outing on 9 July 2024 to the Total Ninja and Grand West. |
| |
|
|
|
|
Machine Learning for Ecology Group Updates |
|
Dr Lorene Jeantet co-authored a new paper published in Scientific Reports titled 'The response of sea turtles to vocalizations opens new perspectives to reduce their bycatch' in collaboration with the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, France. |
| | | | Mr Matthew van den Berg, Dr Emmanuel Dufourq and Mr Milanto Ferdinand Rasolofohery attended the Deep Learning Indaba X in Johannesburg from 8 to 12 July. The aim of the conference was to provide a practical introduction to machine learning for beginners, to exchange scientific knowledge among researchers and to showcase cutting-edge applications from industry partners. |
| | Mr van den Berg presented a poster titled ‘Posture Estimation for the Endangered African Penguin’ and Mr Rasolofohery presented a poster titled ‘Passive Acoustic Monitoring of Animal Populations with Compressed Sensing’. Dr Dufourq gave a keynote titled ‘Deep Learning and Wildlife Monitoring.' |
| |
|
| | | Mr Charles Herbst and Dr Dufourq attended SAICSIT 2024 which took place in Port Elizabeth from 15 to 17 July. Mr Herbst presented a talk titled ‘Empirical Evaluation of Variational Autoencoders and Denoising Diffusion Models for Data Augmentation in Bioacoustics Classification’ which was co-authored by Dr Jeantet and D Dufourq, and was awarded the best computer science paper award. |
| | Dr Dufourq was appointed as an associate editor for the Remote Sensing in Ecology and Conservation Journal. |
| | Dr Jeantet and Dr Dufourq, in collaboration with Stefan Schoombie and Chris Oosthuizen from UCT, published a new article in Royal Society Open Science titled ‘Identifying prey capture events of a free-ranging marine predator using bio-logger data and deep learning’. The study demonstrates that deep learning algorithms can be employed to identify prey capture events in chinstrap penguins. These findings have been featured in Nature Africa and The Conversation media. |
| |
|
|
|
| | Prof. Stephan Wagner, from the Institute of Discrete Mathematics of TU Graz, formerly at Stellenbosch University (and still affiliated as an Extraordinary Professor) visited AIMS South Africa to present a lecture for the Mathematics Problem Solving course for the AI students. |
| | Prof. Wagner has a long history with AIMS. He first taught in 2009, a review course on graph theory, followed by mathematical problem solving in 2010, repeated every year until 2019 (with Alan Beardon from 2010 to 2013, and with Naina Ralaivaosaona after that). |
| | He was also the first lecturer at the newly opened AIMS Rwanda in 2016. |
| | | |
|
| | | | | A group of UKZN students, specializing in astrophysics and space physics, joined by their lecturer, Dr Mthoklozisi Mdlalose, visited AIMS South Africa on 18 July as part of a Western Cape trip, which included visits to SARAO, UCT and SANSA. |
| | They had the opportunity to listen to one of the Structured Master’s Mathematics students, Mr Esau Moyoweshba, speak about life at AIMS and engaged with some staff and students who were on site. |
| |
|
|
|
|
Threading Innovation into Learning |
|
We are growing stitch by stitch! On 20 July 2024, AIMS South Africa hosted Lavender Hill High School for a TurtleStitch workshop, offering 27 learners a unique learning experience that combined coding, creativity, and craftsmanship. This innovative approach engaged learners in programming while allowing them to create personalised, tangible artefacts. |
| | |
|
|
|
|
Community Outreach: AIMS Students Make Mathematics Accessible and Exciting in Honour of Mandela’s Life & Legacy |
|
Community engagement and enrichment through mathematics are integral to the AIMS mission. In addition to conducting cutting-edge research, AIMS students and researchers are expected to engage with the wider community to promote mathematics, empower the next generation of mathematicians, and inspire positive change. |
| | In celebration of Nelson Mandela International Day, AIMS South Africa, in collaboration with Muizenberg Library, hosted a Mathematics Expo-tutorial sessions for Grades 8-11 mathematics learners in Muizenberg and the surrounding areas on the 18 and 20 July |
| | |
|
|
|
|
AIMS Contribution to Waste Management and Recycling: Dialogue in the Greater Muizenberg Community |
|
One of AIMS’s goals is to benefit the broader society. Thus, community engagement is integral to its mission and vision. |
| | On 1 August AIMS South Africa hosted the launch of Talking Rubbish-The Muizenberg Recycling Collective event. The event aimed to have a conversation on waste management and recycling, informal recyclers and solutions to improve recycling practices in our communities. The event premiered the first chapter of the conversation, focusing on “The Informal Waste Picking Community”. |
| | |
|
|
|
|
Teaching tip for lecturers! |
| | | | | | Examples of pedagogical questions that are useful in teaching and learning mathematics: |
| | | Describe what you observe in this diagram/model |
| | | Can you identify the similarities and differences between these two problems? |
| | | Ask students to create a problem that meets these specific constraints. |
| | | In how many different ways can this problem be solved? |
| |
|
|
|
|
|
| | | We have open positions for: |
| | | | | | Please see our applications page for more details! |
| | | |
|
AIMS DFG Collaboration Visits Programme |
| | | This programme promotes mobility within the framework of the initiation of international collaborations. With this call, the DFG and AIMS support the initiation of international research collaborations in the mathematical sciences between researchers from African countries and researchers at German universities. |
| | Researchers in early career phases are particularly encouraged to submit proposals. |
| | Proposals must be submitted in English by 15 October 2024. |
| | | |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
