Data Science for Health in Africa Webinar Series: Dr. Kira Düsterwald - Inferring Hidden, Meaningful Structure in Health Data

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Ditiro Rampate

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Jul 16, 2026, 10:18:07 AMJul 16

Good day,

We are back! The Data Science for Health in Africa webinar series returns as we build towards our annual Data Science for Health in Africa Workshop at the Deep Learning Indaba 2026 in Lagos, Nigeria.

Please join us for our upcoming seminar:

Topic: Inferring Hidden, Meaningful Structure in Health Data
Speaker: Dr. Kira Düsterwald
Date: Friday, 17 July 2026
Time: 6:00 PM CAT

Health data often provide indirect and noisy measurements of the quantities we care about most. We may observe high-dimensional gene-expression profiles, reaction times, EEG signals, patient counts or staffing constraints, while the underlying states of interest—such as cell function, uncertainty, learning, service pressure and risk—remain hidden.

In this talk, Dr. Düsterwald will explore how data science can help recover meaningful structure from these imperfect measurements through three examples from her work:

Metric learning for single-cell RNA-sequencing data
Behavioural and EEG approaches to studying statistical learning in autism
Amathambo AI’s development of patient-load prediction and workforce-planning tools for African health systems

Dr. Kira Düsterwald is a South African medical doctor, computational neuroscientist and health-tech founder. She is completing her PhD at the Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit at University College London and is the CEO of Amathambo AI, winner of the Mandela Rhodes Foundation’s 2023 Äänit Prize.

The Data Science for Health in Africa Workshop will take place on 7 August 2026 during the Deep Learning Indaba, running from 2–7 August in Lagos.

If you will be attending the Indaba and would like to participate in our workshop, please register here:
https://forms.gle/ubDjVbPd4uBv78ij9

We look forward to having you join us as we continue building data science and health innovation with African communities, not merely for them.