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Editor's note: CuspAI raised a $100m Series A in September and is rumored to have reached a unicorn valuation. They have all-star advisors from Geoff Hinton to Yann Lecun and team of deep domain experts to tackle this next frontier in AI applications.In this episode, Max Welling traces the thread connecting quantum gravity, equivariant neural networks, diffusion models, and climate-focused materials discovery (yes, there is one!!!).We begin with a provocative framing: experiments as computation. Welling describes the idea of a “physics processing unit”—a world in which digital models and physical experiments work together, with nature itself acting as a kind of processor. It's a grounded but ambitious vision of AI for science: not replacing chemists, but accelerating them.Along the way, we discuss:* Why symmetry and equivariance matter in deep learning* The tradeoff between scale and inductive bias* The deep mathematical links between diffusion models and stochastic thermodynamics* Why materials—not software—may be the real bottleneck for AI and the energy transition* What it actually takes to build an AI-driven materials platformMax reflects on moving from curiosity-driven theoretical physics (including work with Gerard ‘t Hooft) toward impact-driven research in climate and energy. The result is a conversation about convergence: physics and machine learning, digital models and laboratory experiments, long-term ambition and incremental progress.Full Video EpisodeTimestamps* 00:00:00 – The Physics Processing Unit (PPU): Nature as the Ultimate Computer* Max introduces the idea of a Physics Processing Unit — using real-world experiments as computation.* 00:00:44 – From Quantum Gravity to AI for Materials* Brandon frames Max's career arc: VAE pioneer → equivariant GNNs → materials startup founder.* 00:01:34 – Curiosity vs Impact: How His Motivation Evolved* Max explains the shift from pure theoretical curiosity to climate-driven impact.* 00:02:43 – Why CaspAI Exists: Technology as Climate Strategy* Politics struggles; technology scales. Why materials innovation became the focus.* 00:03:39 – The Thread: Physics → Symmetry → Machine Learning* How gauge symmetry, group theory, and relativity informed equivariant neural networks.* 00:06:52 – AI for Science Is Exploding (Not Emerging)* The funding surge and why AI-for-Science feels like a new industrial era.* 00:07:53 – Why Now? The Two Catalysts Behind AI for Science* Protein folding, ML force fields, and the tipping point moment.* 00:10:12 – How Engineers Can Enter AI for Science* Practical pathways: curriculum, workshops, cross-disciplinary training.* 00:11:28 – Why Materials Matter More Than Software* The argument that everything—LLMs included—rests on materials innovation.* 00:13:02 – Materials as a Search Engine* The vision: automated exploration of chemical space like querying Google.* 01:14:48 – Inside CuspAI: The Platform Architecture* Generative models + multi-scale digital twin + experiment loop.* 00:21:17 – Automating Chemistry: Human-in-the-Loop First* Start manual → modular tools → agents → increasing autonomy.* 00:25:04 – Moonshots vs Incremental Wins* Balancing lighthouse materials with paid partnerships.* 00:26:22 – Why Breakthroughs Will Still Require Humans* Automation is vertical-specific and iterative.* 00:29:01 – What Is Equivariance (In Plain English)?* Symmetry in neural networks explained with the bottle example.* 00:30:01 – Why Not Just Use Data Augmentation?* The optimization trade-off between inductive bias and data scale.* 00:31:55 – Generative AI Meets Stochastic Thermodynamics* His upcoming book and the unification of diffusion models and physics.* 00:33:44 – When the Book Drops (ICLR?)TranscriptMax: I want to think of it as what I would call a physics processing unit, like a PPU, right? Which is you have digital processing units and then you have physics processing units. So it's basically nature doing computations for you. It's the fastest computer known, as possible even. It's a bit hard to program because you have to do all these experiments. Those are quite bulky, it's like a very large thing you have to do. But in a way it is a computation and that's the way I want to see it. You can do computations in a data center and then you can ask nature to do some computations. Your interface with nature is a bit more complicated. But then these things will have to seamlessly work together to get to a new material that you're interested in.[01:00:44:14 - 01:01:34:08]Brandon: Yeah, it's a pleasure to have Max Woehling as a guest today. Max has done so much over his career that I've been so excited about. If you're in the deep learning community, you probably know Max for his work on variational autocoders, which has literally stood the test of prime or officially stood the test of prime. If you are a scientist, you probably know him for his like, binary work on graph neural networks on equivariance. And if you're a material science, you probably know him about his new startup, CASPAI. Max has a long history doing lots of cool problems. You started in quantum gravity, which is I think very different than all of these other things you worked on. The first question for AI engineers and for scientists, what is the thread in how you think about problems? What is the thread in the type of things which excite you? And how do you decide what is the next big thing you want to work on?[01:01:34:08 - 01:02:41:13]Max: So it has actually evolved a lot. In my young days, let's breathe, I would just follow what I would find super interesting. I have kind of this sensor. I think many people have, but maybe not really sort of use very much, which is like, you get this feeling about getting very excited about some problem. Like it could be, what's inside of a black hole or what's at the boundary of the universe or what are quantum mechanics actually all about. And so I follow that basically throughout my career. But I have to say that as you get older, this changes a little bit in the sense that there's a new dimension coming to it and there's this impact. Going in two-dimensional quantum gravity, you pretty much guaranteed there's going to be no impact on what you do relative, maybe a few papers, but not in this world, this energy scale. As I get closer to retirement, which is fortunately still 10 years away or so, I do want to kind of make a positive impact in the world. And I got pretty worried about climate change.[01:02:43:15 - 01:03:19:11]Max: I think politics seems to have a hard time solving it, especially these days. And so I thought better work on it from the technology side. And that's why we started CaspAI. But there's also a lot of really interesting science problems in material science. And so it's kind of combining both the impact you can make with it as well as the interesting science. So it's sort of these two dimensions, like working on things which you feel there's like, well, there's something very deep going on here. And on the other hand, trying to build tools that can actually make a real impact in the world.[01:03:19:11 - 01:03:39:23]RJ: So the thread that when I look back, look at the different things that you worked out, some of them seem pretty connected, like the physics to equivariance and, yeah, and, uh, gravitational networks, maybe. And that seems to be somewhat related to Casp. Do you have a thread through there?[01:03:39:23 - 01:06:52:16]Max: Yeah. So physics is the thread. So having done, you know, spent a lot of time in theoretical physics, I think there is first very fundamental and exciting questions, like things that haven't actually been figured out in quantum gravity. So that is really the frontier. There's also a lot of mathematical tools that you can use, right? In, for instance, in particle physics, but also in general relativity, sort of symmetry space to play an enormously important role. And this goes all the way to gauge symmetries as well. And so applying these kinds of symmetries to, uh, machine learning was actually, you know, I thought of it as a very deep and interesting mathematical problem. I did this with Taco Cohen and Taco was the main driver behind this, went all the way from just simple, like rotational symmetries all the way to gauge symmetries on spheres and stuff like that. So, and, uh, Maurice Weiler, who's also here, um, when he was a PhD student, he was a very good student with me, you know, he wrote an entire book, which I can really recommend about the role of symmetries in AI and machine learning. So I find this a very deep and interesting problem. So more recently, so I've taken a sort of different path, which is the relationship between diffusion models and that field called stochastic thermodynamics. This is basically the thermodynamics, which is a theory of equilibrium. So but then formulated for out of equilibrium systems. And it turns out that the mathematics that we use for diffusion models, but even for reinforcement learning for Schrodinger bridges for MCMC sampling has the same mathematics as this theoretical, this physical theory of non-equilibrium systems. And that got me very excited. And actually, uh, when I taught a course in, um, Mauschenberg, uh, it is South Africa, close to Cape Town at the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences Ames. And I turned that into a book site. Two years later, the book was finished. I've sent it to the publisher. And this is about the deep relationship between free energy, diffusion models, basically generative AI and stochastic thermodynamics. So it's always some kind of, I don't know, I find physics very deep. I also think a lot about quantum mechanics and it's, it's, it's a completely weird theory that actually nobody really understands. And there's a very interesting story, which is maybe good to tell to connect sort of my PZ back to where I'm now. So I did my PZ with a Nobel Laureate, Gerard the toft. He says the most brilliant man I've ever met. He was never wrong about anything as long as I've seen him. And now he says quantum mechanics is wrong and he has a new theory of quantum mechanics. Nobody understands what he's saying, even though what he's writing down is not mathematically very complex, but he's trying to address this understandability, let's say of quantum mechanics head on. And I find it very courageous and I'm completely fascinated by it. So I'm also trying to think about, okay, can I actually understand quantum mechanics in a more mundane way? So that, you know, without all the weird multiverses and collapses and stuff like that. So the physics is always been the threat and I'm trying to apply the physics to the machine learning to build better algorithms.[01:06:52:16 - 01:07:05:15]Brandon: You are still very involved in understanding and understanding physics and the worlds. Yeah. And just like applications to machine learning or introducing no formalisms. That's really cool.[01:07:05:15 - 01:07:18:02]Max: Yes, I would say I'm not contributing much to physics, but I'm contributing to the interface between physics and science. And that's called AI for science or science or AI is kind of a super, it's actually a new discipline that's emerging.[01:07:18:02 - 01:07:18:19]Speaker 5: Yeah.[01:07:18:19 - 01:07:45:14]Max: And it's not just emerging, it's exploding, I would say. That's the better term because I know you go from investments into like in the hundreds of millions now in the billions. So there's now actually a startup by Jeff Bezos that is at 6.2 billion sheep round. Right. Insane. I guess it's the largest startup ever, I think. And that's in this field, AI for science. It tells you something that we are creating a new bubble here.[01:07:46:15 - 01:07:53:28]Brandon: So why do you think it is? What has changed that has motivated people to start working on AI for science type problems?[01:07:53:28 - 01:08:49:17]Max: So there's two reasons actually. One is that people have been applying sort of the new tools from AI to the sciences, which is quite natural. And there's of course, I think there's two big examples, protein folding is a big one. And the other one is machine learning forest fields or something called machine learning inter-atomic potentials. Both of them have been actually very successful. Both also had something to do with symmetries, which is a little cool. And sort of people in the AI sciences saw an opportunity to apply the tools that they had developed beyond advertised placement, right, or multimedia applications into something that could actually make a very positive impact in society like health, drug development, materials for the energy transition, carbon capture. These are all really cool, impactful applications.[01:08:50:19 - 01:09:42:14]Max: Despite that, the science and the kind of the is also very interesting. I would say the fact that these sort of these two fields are coming together and that we're now at the point that we can actually model these things effectively and move the needle on some of these sort of science sort of methodologies is also a very unique moment, I would say. People recognize that, okay, now we're at the cusp of something new, where it results whether the company is called after. We're at the cusp of something new. And of course that always creates a lot of energy. It's like, okay, there's something, it's like sort of virgin field. It's like nobody's green field. Nobody's been there. I can rush in and I can sort of start harvesting there, right? And I think that's also what's causing a lot of sort of enthusiasm in the fields.[01:09:42:14 - 01:10:12:18]RJ: If you're an AI engineer, basically if the people that listen to this podcast will be in the field, then you maybe don't have a strong science background. How does, but are excited. Most I would say most AI practitioners, BM engineers or scientists would consider themselves scientists and they have some background, a little bit of physics, a little bit of industry college, maybe even graduate school that have been working or are starting out. How does somebody who is not a scientist on a day-to-day basis, how do they get involved?[01:10:12:18 - 01:10:14:28]Max: Well, they can read my book once it's out.[01:10:16:07 - 01:11:05:24]Max: This is basically saying that there is more, we should create curricula that are on this interface. So I'm not sure there is, also we already have some universities actual courses you can take, maybe online courses you can take. These workshops where we are now are actually very good as well. And we should probably have more tutorials before the workshop starts. Actually we've, I've kind of proposed this at some point. It's like maybe first have an hour of a tutorial so that people can get new into the field. There's a lot out there. Most of it is of course inaccessible, but I would say we will create much more books and other contents that is more accessible, including this podcast I would say. So I think it will come. And these days you can watch videos and things. There's a huge amount of content you can go and see.[01:11:05:24 - 01:11:28:28]Brandon: So maybe a follow-up to that. How do people learn and get involved? But why should they get involved? I mean, we have a lot of people who are of our audience will be interested in AI engineering, but they may be looking for bigger impacts in the world. What opportunities does AI for science provide them to make an impact to change the world? That working in this the world of pure bits would not.[01:11:28:28 - 01:11:40:06]Max: So my view is that underlying almost everything is immaterial. So we are focusing a lot on LLMs now, which is kind of the software layer.[01:11:41:06 - 01:11:56:05]Max: I would say if you think very hard, underlying everything is immaterial. So underlying an LLM is a GPU, and underlying a GPU is a wafer on which we will have to deposit materials. Do we want to wait a little bit?[01:12:02:25 - 01:12:11:06]Max: Underlying everything is immaterial. So I was saying, you know, there's the LLM underlying the LLM is a GPU on which it runs. In order to make that GPU,[01:12:12:08 - 01:12:43:20]Max: you have to put materials down on a wafer and sort of shine on it with sort of EUV light in order to etch kind of the structures in. But that's now an actual material problem, because more or less we've reached the limits of scaling things down. And now we are trying to improve further by new materials. So that's a fundamental materials problem. We need to get through the energy transition fast if we don't want to kind of mess up this world. And so there is, for instance, batteries. That's a complete materials problem. There's fuel cells.[01:12:44:23 - 01:13:01:16]Max: There is solar panels. So that they can now make solar panels with new perovskite layers on top of the silicon layers that can capture, you know, theoretically up to 50% of the light, where now we're at, I don't know, maybe 22 or something. So these are huge changes all by material innovation.[01:13:02:21 - 01:13:47:15]Max: And yeah, I think wherever you go, you know, I can probably dig deep enough and then tell you, well, actually, the very foundation of what you're doing is a material problem. And so I think it's just very nice to work on this very, very foundation. And also because I think this is maybe also something that's happening now is we can start to search through this material space. This has never been the case, right? It's like scientists, the normal way of working is you read papers and then you come up with no hypothesis. You do an experiment and you learn, et cetera. So that's a very slow process. Now we can treat this as a search engine. Like we search the internet, we now search the space of all possible molecules, not just the ones that people have made or that they're in the universe, but all of them.[01:13:48:21 - 01:14:42:01]Max: And we can make this kind of fully automated. That's the hope, right? We can just type, it becomes a tool where you type what you want and something starts spinning and some experiments get going. And then, you know, outcome list of materials and then you look at it and say, maybe not. And then you refine your query a little bit. And you kind of do research with this search engine where a huge amount of computation and experimentation is happening, you know, somewhere far away in some lab or some data center or something like this. I find this a very, very promising view of how we can sort of build a much better sort of materials layer underneath almost everything. And also more sustainable materials. Our plastics are polluting the planet. If you come up with a plastic that kind of destroys itself, you know, after, I don't a few weeks, right? And actually becomes a fertilizer. These are things that are not impossible at all. These things can be done, right? And we should do it.[01:14:42:01 - 01:14:47:23]RJ: Can you tell us a little bit just generally about CUSBI and then I have a ton of questions.[01:14:47:23 - 01:14:48:15]Speaker 5: Yeah.[01:14:48:15 - 01:17:49:10]Max: So CUSBI started about 20 months ago and it was because I was worried about I'm still worried about climate change. And so I realized that in order to get, you know, to stay within two degrees, let's say, we would not only have to reduce our emissions to zero by 2050, but then, you know, another half century or even a century of removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, not by reducing your emissions, but actually removing it at a rate that's about half the rate that we now emit it. And that is a unsolved problem. But if we don't solve it, two degrees is not going to happen, right? It's going to be much more. And I don't think people quite understand how bad that can be, like four degrees, like very bad. So this technology needs to be developed. And so this was my and my co-founder, Chet Edwards, motivation to start this startup. And also because, you know, we saw the technology was ready, which is also very good. So if you're, you know, the time is right to do it. And yeah, so we now in the meanwhile, we've grown to about 40 people. We've kind of collected 130 million investment into the company, which is for a European company is quite a lot. I would say it's interesting that right after that, you know, other startups got even more. So that's kind of tells you how fast this is growing. But yeah, we are we are now at the we've built the platform, of course, but it's for a series of material classes and it needs to be constantly expanded to new material classes. And it can be more automated because, you know, we know putting LLMs in as the whole thing gets more and more automated. And now we're moving to sort of high throughput experimentation. So connecting the actual platform, which is computational, to the experiments so that you can get also get fast feedback from experiments. And I kind of think of experiments as something you do at the end, although that's what we've been doing so far. I want to think of it as what I would call a sort of a physics processing unit, like a PPU, right, which is you have digital processing units and then you have physics processing units. So it's basically nature doing computations for you. It's the fastest computer known as possible, even. It's a bit hard to program because you have to do all these experiments. Those are quite, quite bulky. It's like a very large thing you have to do. But in a way, it is a computation. And that's the way I want to see it. So I want to you can do computations in a data center and then you can ask nature to do some computations. Your interface with nature is a bit more complicated. But then these things will have to seamlessly work together to get to a new material that you're interested in. And that's the vision we have. We don't say super intelligence because I don't quite know what it means and I don't want to oversell it. But I do want to automate this process and give a very powerful tool in the hands of the chemists and the material scientists.[01:17:49:10 - 01:18:01:02]Brandon: That actually brings up a question I wanted to ask you. First of all, can you talk about your platform to like whatever degree, like explain kind of how it works and like what you your thought processes was in developing it?[01:18:01:02 - 01:20:47:22]Max: Yeah, I think it's been surprisingly, it's not rocket science, I would say. It's not rocket science in the sense of the design and basically the design that, you know, I wrote down at the very beginning. It's still more or less the design, although you add things like I wasn't thinking very much about multi-scale models and as the common are rated that actually multi-scale is very important. And the beginning, I wasn't thinking very much about self-driving labs. But now I think, you know, we are now at the stage we should be adding that. And so there is sort of bits and details that we're adding. But more or less, it's what you see in the slide decks here as well, which is there is a generative component that you have to train to generate candidates. And then there is a digital twin, multi-scale, multi-fidelity digital twin, which you walk through the steps of the ladder, you know, they do the cheap things first, you weed out everything that's obviously unuseful, and then you go to more and more expensive things later. And so you narrow things down to a small number. Those go into an experiment, you know, do the experiment, get feedback, etc. Now, things that also have been more recently added is sort of more agentic sort of parts. You know, we have agents that search the literature and come up with, you know, actually the chemical literature and come up with, you know, chemical suggestions for doing experiments. We have agents which sort of autonomously orchestrate all of the computations and the experiments that need to be done. You know, they're in various stages of maturity and they can be continuously improved, I would say. And so that's basically I don't think that part. There's rocket science, but, you know, the design of that thing is not like surprising. What is it's surprising hard to actually build it. Right. So that's that's the thing that is where the moat is in the data that you can get your hands on and the and actually building the platform. And I would say there's two people in particular I want to call out, which is Felix Hunker, who is actually, you know, building the scientific part of the platform and Sandra de Maria, who is building the sort of the skate that is kind of this the MLOps part of the platform. Yeah. And so and recently we also added sort of Aaron Walsh to our team, who is a very accomplished scientist from Imperial College. We're very happy about that. He's going to be a chief science officer. And we also have a partnerships team that sort of seeks out all the customers because I think this is one thing I find very important. In print, it's so complex to do to actually bring a material to the real world that you must do this, you know, in collaboration with sort of the domain experts, which are the companies typically. So we always we only start to invest in the direction if we find a good industrial partner to go on that journey with us.[01:20:47:22 - 01:20:55:12]Brandon: Makes a lot of sense. Over the evolution of the platform, did you find that you that human intervention, human,[01:20:56:18 - 01:21:17:01]Brandon: I guess you could start out with a pure, you could imagine two directions when you start up making everything purely automatic, automated, agentic, so on. And then later on, you like find that you need to have more human input and feedback different steps. Or maybe did you start out with having human feedback? You have lots of steps and then like kind of, yeah, figure out ways to remove, you know,[01:21:17:01 - 01:22:39:18]Max: that is the second one. So you build tools for you. So it's much more modular than you think. But it's like, we need these tools for this application. We need these tools. So you build all these tools, and then you go through a workflow actually in the beginning just manually. So you put them in a first this tool, then run this to them or this with sithery. So you put them in a workflow and then you figure out, oh, actually, you know, this this porous material that we are trying to make actually collapses if you shake it a bit. Okay, then you add a new tool that says test for stability. Right. Yeah. And so there's more and more tools. And then you build the agent, which could be a Bayesian optimizer, or it could be an actual other them, you know, maybe trained to be a good chemist that will then start to use all these tools in the right way in the right order. Yeah. Right. But in the beginning, it's like you as a chemist are putting the workflow together. And then you think about, okay, how am I going to automate this? Right. For one very easy question you can ask yourself is, you know, every time somebody who is not a super expert in DFT, yeah, and he wants to do a calculation has to go to somebody who knows DFT. And so could you start to automate that away, which is like, okay, make it so user friendly, so that you actually do the right DFT for the right problem and for the right length of time, and you can actually assess whether it's a good outcome, etc. So you start to automate smaller small pieces and bigger pieces, etc. And in the end, the whole thing is automated.[01:22:39:18 - 01:22:53:25]Brandon: So your philosophy is you want to provide a set of specific tools that make it so that the scientists making decisions are better informed and less so trying to create an automated process.[01:22:53:25 - 01:23:22:01]Max: I think it's this is sort of the same where you're saying because, yes, we want to automate, yeah, but we don't see something very soon where the chemists and the domain expert is out of the loop. Yeah, but it but it's a retreat, right? It's like, okay, so first, you need an expert to tell you precisely how to set the parameters of the DFT calculation. Okay, maybe we can take that out. We can maybe automate that, right? And so increasingly, more of these things are going to be removed.[01:23:22:01 - 01:23:22:19]Speaker 5: Yeah.[01:23:22:19 - 01:24:33:25]Max: In the end, the vision is it will be a search engine where you where somebody, a chemist will type things and we'll get candidates, but the chemist will still decide what is a good material and what is not a good material out of that list, right? And so the vision of a completely dark lab, where you can close the door and you just say, just, you know, find something interesting and then it will it will just figure out what's interesting and we'll figure out, you know, it's like, oh, I found this new material to blah, blah, blah, blah, right? That's not the vision I have. He's not for, you know, a long time. So for me, it's really empowering the domain experts that are sitting in the companies and in universities to be much faster in developing their materials. And I should say, it's also good to be a little humble at times, because it is very complicated, you know, to bring it to make it and to bring it into the real world. And there are people that are doing this for the entire lives. Yeah. Right. And it's like, I wonder if they scratch their head and say, well, you know, how are you going to completely automate that away, like in the next five years? I don't think that's going to happen at all.[01:24:35:01 - 01:24:39:24]Max: Yeah. So to me, it's an increasingly powerful tool in the hands of the chemists.[01:24:39:24 - 01:25:04:02]RJ: I have a question. You've talked before about getting people interested based on having, you know, sort of a big breakthrough in materials, incremental change. I'm curious what you think about the platform you have now in are sort of stepping towards and how are you chasing the big change or is this like incremental or is there they're not mutually exclusive, obviously, but what do you think about that?[01:25:04:02 - 01:26:04:27]Max: We follow a mixed strategy. So we are definitely going after a big material. Again, we do this with a partner. I'm not going to disclose precisely what it is, but we have our own kind of long term goal. You could call it lighthouse or, you know, sort of moonshot or whatever, but it is going to be a really impactful material that we want to develop as a proof point that it can be done and that it will make it into the into the real world and that AI was essential in actually making it happen. At the same time, we also are quite happy to work with companies that have more modest goals. Like I would say one is a very deep partnership where you go on a journey with a company and that's a long term commitment together. And the other one is like somebody says, I knew I need a force field. Can you help me train this force field and then maybe analyze this particular problem for me? And I'll pay you a bunch of money for that. And then maybe after that we'll see. And that's fine too. Right. But we prefer, you know, the deep partnerships where we can really change something for the good.[01:26:04:27 - 01:26:22:02]RJ: Yeah. And do you feel like from a platform standpoint you're ready for that or what are the things that and again, not asking you to disclose proprietary secret sauce, but what are the things generally speaking that need to happen from where we are to where to get those big breakthroughs?[01:26:22:02 - 01:28:40:01]Max: What I find interesting about this field is that every time you build something, it's actually immediately useful. Right. And so unlike quantum computing, which or nuclear fusion, so you work for 20, 30, 40 years and nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing. And then it has to happen. Right. And when it happens, it's huge. So it's quite different here because every time you introduce, so you go to a customer and you say, so what do you need? Right. So we work, let's say, on a problem like a water filtration. We want to remove PFAS from water. Right. So we do this with a company, Camira. So they are a deep partner for us. Right. So we on a journey together. I think that the breakthrough will happen with a lot of human in the loop because there is the chemists who have a whole lot more knowledge of their field and it's us who will help them with training, having a new message. And in that kind of interface, these interactions, something beautiful will happen and that will have to happen first before this field will really take off, I think. And so in the sense that it's not a bubble, let's put it that way. So that's people see that as actual real what's happening. So in the beginning, it will be very, you know, with a lot of humans in the loop, I would say, and I would I would hope we will have this new sort of breakthrough material before, you know, everything is completely automated because that will take a while. And also it is very vertical specific. So it's like completely automating something for problem A, you know, you can probably achieve it, but then you'll sort of have to start over again for problem B because, you know, your experimental setup looks very different in the machines that you characterize your materials look very different. Even the models in your platform will have to be retrained and fine tuned to the new class. So every time, you know, you have a lot of learnings to transfer, but also, you know, the problems are actually different. And so, yes, I would want that breakthrough material before it's completely automated, which I think is kind of a long term vision. And I would say every time you move to something new, you'll have to start retraining and humans will have to come in again and say, okay, so what does this problem look like? And now sort of, you know, point the the machine again, you know, in the new direction and then and then use it again.[01:28:40:01 - 01:28:47:17]RJ: For the non-scientists among us, me included a bit of a scientist. There's a lot of terminology. You mentioned DFT,[01:28:49:00 - 01:29:01:11]RJ: you equivariance we've talked about. Can you sort of explain in engineering terms or the level of sophistication and engineering? Well, how what is equivariance?[01:29:01:11 - 01:29:55:01]Max: So equivariance is the infusion of symmetry in neural networks. So if I build a neural network, let's say that needs to recognize this bottle, right, and then I rotate the bottle, it will then actually have to completely start again because it has no idea that the rotated bottle. Well, actually, the input that represents a rotated bottle is actually rotated bottle. It just doesn't understand that. Right. If you build equivariance in basically once you've trained it in one orientation, it will understand it in any other orientation. So that means you need a lot less data to train these models. And these are constraints on the weights of the model. So so basically you have to constrain the way such data to understand it. And you can build it in, you can hard code it in. And yeah, this the symmetry groups can be, you know, translations, rotations, but also permutations. I can graph neural network, their permutations and then physics, of course, as many more of these groups.[01:29:55:01 - 01:30:01:08]RJ: To pray devil's advocate, why not just use data augmentation by your bottle is in all the different orientations?[01:30:01:08 - 01:30:58:23]Max: As an option, it's just not exact. It's like, why would you go through the work of doing all that? Where you would really need an infinite number of augmentations to get it completely right. Where you can also hard code it in. Now, I have to say sometimes actually data augmentation works even better than hard coding the equivariance in. And this is something to do with the fact that if you constrain the optimization, the weights before the optimization starts, the optimization surface or objective becomes more complicated. And so it's harder to find good minima. So there is also a complicated interplay, I think, between the optimization process and these constraints you put in your network. And so, yeah, you'll hear kind of contradicting claims in this field. Like some people and for certain applications, it works just better than not doing it. And sometimes you hear other people, if you have a lot of data and you can do data augmentation, then actually it's easier to optimize them and it actually works better than putting the equivariance in.[01:30:58:23 - 01:31:07:16]Brandon: Do you think there's kind of a bitter lesson for mathematically founded models and strategies for doing deep learning?[01:31:07:16 - 01:31:46:06]Max: Yeah, ultimately it's a trade-off between data and inductive bias. So if your inductive bias is not perfectly correct, you have to be careful because you put a ceiling to what you can do. But if you know the symmetry is there, it's hard to imagine there isn't a way to actually leverage it. But yeah, so there is a bitter lesson. And one of the bitter lessons is you should always make sure your architecture is scale, unless you have a tiny data set, in which case it doesn't matter. But if you, you know, the same bitter lessons or lessons that you can draw in LLM space are eventually going to be true in this space as well, I think.[01:31:47:10 - 01:31:55:01]RJ: Can you talk a little bit about your upcoming book and tell the listeners, like, what's exciting about it? Yeah, I should read it.[01:31:55:01 - 01:33:42:20]Max: So this book is about, it's called Generative AI and Stochastic Thermodynamics. It basically lays bare the fact that the mathematics that goes into both generative AI, which is the technology to generate images and videos, and this field of non-equilibrium statistical mechanics, which are systems of molecules that are just moving around and relaxing to the ground state, or that you can control to have certain, you know, be in a certain state, the mathematics of these two is actually identical. And so that's fascinating. And in fact, what's interesting is that Jeff Hinton and Radford Neal already wrote down the variational free energy for machine learning a long time ago. And there's also Carl Friston's work on free energy principle and active entrance. But now we've related it to this very new field in physics, which is called stochastic thermodynamics or non-equilibrium thermodynamics, which has its own very interesting theorems, like fluctuation theorems, which we don't typically talk about, but we can learn a lot from. And I think it's just it can sort of now start to cross fertilize. When we see that these things are actually the same, we can, like we did for symmetries, we can now look at this new theory that's out there, developed by these very smart physicists, and say, okay, what can we take from here that will make our algorithms better? At the same time, we can use our models to now help the scientists do better science. And so it becomes a beautiful cross-fertilization between these two fields. The book is rather technical, I would say. And it takes all sorts of things that have been done as stochastic thermodynamics, and all sorts of models that have been done in the machine learning literature, and it basically equates them to each other. And I think hopefully that sense of unification will be revealing to people.[01:33:42:20 - 01:33:44:05]RJ: Wait, and when is it out?[01:33:44:05 - 01:33:56:09]Max: Well, it depends on the publisher now. But I hope in April, I'm going to give a keynote at ICLR. And it would be very nice if they have this book in my hand. But you know, it's hard to control these kind of timelines.[01:33:56:09 - 01:33:58:19]RJ: Yeah, I'm looking forward to it. Great.[01:33:58:19 - 01:33:59:25]Max: Thank you very much. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.latent.space/subscribe

It’s been nearly 200 years since the founding of the first African Institute in the United States. Since that time, historically Black colleges and universities continue to influence society and impact diverse students of every race and cultural background. On Wednesday’s “Closer Look with Rose Scott,” we spoke to Chicago PBS News Anchor Brandis Friedman about her new documentary, “Opportunity, Access & Uplift: The Evolving Legacy of HBCUs.” Following the Trump Administration’s repeal of the Environmental Protection Agency’s 2009 Endangerment Finding, “Closer Look,” is joined by Diamond Spratling, the founder and executive director of Girl + Environment. Through her work, she raises awareness about what’s harming the environment, plus trains and teaches Black and Brown women to advocate for climate solutions. She shares how President Trump’s actions could harm vulnerable communities.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

JC Marais, faculty, African Institute of Financial Markets and Risk Management, University of Cape Town, discusses his research on how insurer capital and market shifts shape the property-liability underwriting cycle that influences pricing, risk and profitability.

My guest this week on The Long Form is Raymond Mujuni — award-winning Ugandan journalist, Deputy Director of the African Institute for Investigative Journalism, and co-host of Grab a Coffee Podcast .In this episode, we dive into what Uganda's urban generation is really fighting for, Museveni, NRM, the tension between Kampala's brunch-going elites and hustling boda-boda riders, and what that says about the future of Uganda, Rwanda and East Africa.Consider supporting this podcast via our Momo code 95462 or directly to our phone number: +250 795462739 Visit Sanny Ntayombya's Official Website: https://sannyntayombya.com

In this episode of the Living Proof podcast we're delighted to meet Moustapha Fall. Moustapha is the Center President of the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS) in Senegal and winner of a prestigious Ramanujan Prize for Young Mathematicians from Developing Countries. He also plays an important role on the international stage as Member-at-Large of the Executive Committee of the International Mathematical Union. Moustapha talks to us about about the amazing institution that is AIMS, about his outreach activities and advice for budding mathematicians, and about the challenges that face mathematicians in sub-Saharan Africa. You can find the IMU-ICIAM report on fraudulent publishing, which Moustapha mentions in the podcast, here. The same team of authors has also drawn up recommendations on how to fight fraudulent publishing.

Send us a textIn this episode of the Living Proof podcast we're delighted to meet Moustapha Fall. Moustapha is the Center President of the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS) in Senegal and winner of a prestigious Ramanujan Prize for Young Mathematicians from Developing Countries. He also plays an important role on the international stage as Member-at-Large of the Executive Committee of the International Mathematical Union.Moustapha talks to us about about the amazing institution that is AIMS, about his outreach activities and advice for budding mathematicians, and about the challenges that face mathematicians in sub-Saharan Africa.You can find the IMU-ICIAM report on fraudulent publishing, which Moustapha mentions in the podcast, here. The same team of authors has also drawn up recommendations on how to fight fraudulent publishing.We met Moustapha when he visited the Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences in Cambridge.

In response to news of a BAN on “exotic animal skins” in London's fashion week, Robbie is joined by Christy Plott Gilmore, a 4th-generation crocodile and alligator industry specialist whose family has owned a tannery for generations in Georgia. Christy invited Dr. Patrick Aust, the Director of the African Institute of Applied Herpetology and expert in innovative solutions to reptilian management to join this conversation. If you have ever been interested in understanding the world of sustainable use of wildlife then listen to this podcast! Get to know the guest: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeanetta-selier-ab341418?originalSubdomain=za https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Jeanetta-Selier Do you have questions we can answer? Send it via DM on IG or through email at info@bloodorigins.com Support our Conservation Club Members! Trophy Destinations: https://www.trophydestinations.com/  Sun Africa Safaris: https://www.sun-africa.com/  Bear Country Outdoors: https://bearcountryoutdoors.com/  See more from Blood Origins: https://bit.ly/BloodOrigins_Subscribe Music: Migration by Ian Post (Winter Solstice), licensed through artlist.io This podcast is brought to you by Bushnell, who believes in providing the highest quality, most reliable & affordable outdoor products on the market. Your performance is their passion. https://www.bushnell.com  This podcast is also brought to you by Silencer Central, who believes in making buying a silencer simple and they handle the paperwork for you. Shop the largest silencer dealer in the world. Get started today! https://www.silencercentral.com  This podcast is brought to you by Safari Specialty Importers. Why do serious hunters use Safari Specialty Importers? Because getting your trophies home to you is all they do. Find our more at: https://safarispecialtyimporters.com  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In response to news of a BAN on “exotic animal skins” in London's fashion week, Robbie is joined by Christy Plott Gilmore, a 4th-generation crocodile and alligator industry specialist whose family has owned a tannery for generations in Georgia. Christy invited Dr. Patrick Aust, the Director of the African Institute of Applied Herpetology and expert in innovative solutions to reptilian management to join this conversation. If you have ever been interested in understanding the world of sustainable use of wildlife then listen to this podcast! Do you have questions we can answer? Send it via DM on IG or through email at info@bloodorigins.com Support our Conservation Club Members! Big Chino Outfitters: https://www.bigchinooutfitters.com/  John X Safaris: https://www.johnxsafaris.com/  Stone Road Media: https://www.stoneroadmedia.com/  See more from Blood Origins: https://bit.ly/BloodOrigins_Subscribe Music: Migration by Ian Post (Winter Solstice), licensed through artlist.io This podcast is brought to you by Bushnell, who believes in providing the highest quality, most reliable & affordable outdoor products on the market. Your performance is their passion. https://www.bushnell.com  This podcast is also brought to you by Silencer Central, who believes in making buying a silencer simple and they handle the paperwork for you. Shop the largest silencer dealer in the world. Get started today! https://www.silencercentral.com  This podcast is brought to you by Safari Specialty Importers. Why do serious hunters use Safari Specialty Importers? Because getting your trophies home to you is all they do. Find our more at: https://safarispecialtyimporters.com  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Katika Jarida la Habari la Umoja wa Mataifa hii leo Assumpta Massoi anakuletea-Katibu Mkuu wa Umoja wa Matafa Antonio Guterres  awapongeza walinda amani wa kikosi cha mpito nchini Lebanon UNIFIL kwa kujitolea kuhakikisha amani nchini humo-Baada ya kutangazwa muafaka wa usitishaji mapigano baina ya Israel na Hamas , raia wa Gaza wanasemaje? Utasikia hisia zao za furaha na majonzi-Makala leo inatupeleka Ghana kukutana na Angela Tabiri, mwanahisabati bora duniani na pia Mtafiti na Mhadhiri katika Chuo cha African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS) kilichoko Accra-Na mashinani tutaelekea nchini Uganda kusikia kuhusu mradi wa UNESCO unaowapatia wanafunzi stadi za teknolojia na ubunifu

 Ikiwa Umoja wa Mataifa unaunga mkono masomo ya Sayansi, Teknolojia na Hisabati, au STEM, Angela Tabiri ni mwanahisabati bora duniani, Mtafiti na Mhadhiri kutoka Chuo cha African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS) kilichoko Accra nchini Ghana Magharibi mwa bara la Afrika, amekuwa akitoa mchango katika kuhakikisha wasichana nchini humo wanapata elimu ya hisabati kupitia taasisi yake ya FemAfricMaths. Kwa kufanya hivyo anatimiza lengo namba 4 ya Malengo endelevu ya Umoja Mataifa(SDGs) linalohimiza elimu bora kwa wote na lile namba 5 linalozungumzia usawa wa kijinsia. Kutoka mjini Mwanza kaskazini magharibi mwa Tanzania, Sabrina Moshi wa redio washirika Saut Fm amefanya mahojiano na mtaalamu huyo. Angela anaanza kwa kueleza namna alivyokuwa na ndoto hadi kuanzisha FemAfricMaths ili kuwasaidia wasichana barani Afrika.

Before you listen to this episode, please be warned we will be discussing incidents that are highly distressing. Some of the explanations could upset some listeners.Abortion laws vary across Africa, leading to many cases of unsafe abortions. Sub-Saharan Africa records over 6 million unsafe abortions annually according to the African Institute for Development Policy. The maternal death rate from unsafe abortions in Africa remains among the highest globally, underscoring the urgent need for clearer laws and better access to safe care. In Uganda, abortion is illegal unless the mother's life is at risk, which has meant that many there resort to unsafe terminations. Despite significant funding for post-abortion care, women and healthcare workers in Uganda remain reluctant to seek or offer help due to societal and religious pressures. Activist Moses Odongo, whose 14-year-old cousin Christine died in an attempt to terminate her pregnancy, talks to Africa Daily's Mpho Lakaje about what happened to his cousin.

Clarence Ford speaks to Dr Joshua Awesome coaching psychologist and founder of the African Institute of Mind. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Reflecting on the dangers of technological monopolization, many tech entrepreneurs warn that without action, technology may become "yet another tool for the privileged few to stay privileged." With a career that includes experience at Google and Meta, Terrence Taylor, the visionary Founder of the African Institute of Future Technologies (AIFT), brings a unique perspective on how advanced technologies like AI and robotics can bridge the digital divide. Join us as we explore his journey from Sierra Leone to Johannesburg, his efforts to empower one billion Africans through education, and his vision for a future where technology serves as a force for equity and opportunity across the continent.   Join us as we get rebelliously curious.   Watch the YouTube interview - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3oq6-yjbp98 Follow Chrissy Newton: Winner of the Canadian Podcast Awards for Best Science Series. YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCM32gjHqMnYl_MOHZetC8Eg  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/beingchrissynewton/  Twitter: https://twitter.com/chrissynewton?lang=en Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BeingChrissyNewton  Chrissy Newton's Website: https://chrissynewton.com Top Canadian Science Podcast: https://podcasts.feedspot.com/canadian_science_podcasts/ 

Franca Hoffmann is an Assistant Professor in Computing and Mathematical Sciences at Caltech and International Scientific Advisor at Quantum Leap Africa, at the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS). In this episode, David Stern talks to Franca about their recent experiences in Kenya, including a workshop in Kisumu organized by the American Institute of Mathematics and the African STACK Conference in Nairobi. Franca recounts her journey from participating in Maths Camps in Africa to playing a significant role in math education initiatives across the continent.

Terrence Taylor is the Founder of the African Institute of Future Technologies that aims to train one million to one billion individuals on the latest technologies, including AI, robotics, and genetics. The goal is to prepare the African continent to lead by 2050. In this episode, KJ and Terrence delve into the potential risks of closed AI systems, Africa's history as early adopters of technology, and the power of African cultural values like Ubuntu in creating a unified, empowered community. Terrence also outlines AIFT's five-step plan for achieving their groundbreaking mission and underscores the importance of belief, thinking big, and overcoming fear with faith.   Key Takeaways: 04:18 Terrence's Journey and Vision for Africa 11:36 The Importance of Open AI 20:25 Challenges and Opportunities for Africa 30:01 Next Steps for AIFT   Quote of the Show (26:00): “Africans tend to be early adopters of technology. My vision is to ensure they have the tools and skills to be the next wave of tech giants." – Terrence Taylor   Join our Anti-PR newsletter where we're keeping a watchful and clever eye on PR trends, PR fails, and interesting news in tech so you don't have to. You're welcome.   Want PR that actually matters? Get 30 minutes of expert advice in a fast-paced, zero-nonsense session from Karla Jo Helms, a veteran Crisis PR and Anti-PR Strategist who knows how to tell your story in the best possible light and get the exposure you need to disrupt your industry. Click here to book your call: https://info.jotopr.com/free-anti-pr-eval   Ways to connect with Terrence Taylor LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/terrenceokeketaylor   How to get more Disruption/Interruption:  Amazon Music - https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/eccda84d-4d5b-4c52-ba54-7fd8af3cbe87/disruption-interruption Apple Podcast - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/disruption-interruption/id1581985755 Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/6yGSwcSp8J354awJkCmJlD  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Cheyney University, originally known as the African Institute, was established on April 19, 1837. Billing itself as the oldest African-American institution of higher learning in the nation, its founding was enabled by Richard Humphreys, a Quaker philanthropist who generously donated $10,000 — a tenth of his estate — to establish a school for individuals of African descent. Offering degrees in over 30 disciplines and a master's degree in education, the university boasts an impressive roster of alumni, including Ed Bradley, the late 60 Minutes television journalist, and civil rights leader Bayard Rustin. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Set in Colonial Northern Nigeria, this book confronts a paradox: the state insisted on its separation from religion even as it governed its multireligious population through what remained of the precolonial caliphate. Entangled Domains: Empire, Law and Religion in Northern Nigeria (Cambridge UP, 2023) grapples with this history to offer a provocative account of secularism as a contested yet contingent mode of governing religion and religious difference. Drawing on detailed archival research, Rabiat Akande vividly illustrates constitutional struggles triggered by the colonial state's governance of religion and interrogates the legacy of that governance agenda in the postcolonial state. This book is a novel commentary on the dynamic interplay between law, faith, identity, and power in the context of the modern state's emergence from colonial processes. Dr. Akande is currently an Assistant Professor in the Osgoode Hall Law School at York University in Canada and chairs the international legal history project at the African Institute of International Law in Arusha. Previously, she was a postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies as an Academy Scholar from 2019-2021. She received her Doctor of Juridical Science (SJD) degree from Harvard Law School in 2019 with her dissertation, “Navigating Entanglements: Contestations over Religion-State Relations in British Northern Nigeria, c. 1890-1978” receiving the Law and Society in the Muslim World Prize. At Harvard University, Dr. Akande held the Clark Byse fellowship at the Law School and was a Dissertation Fellow and Graduate Student Associate at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs. She also served on the editorial board of the Harvard International Law Journal. Prior to her graduate work, Dr. Akande obtained her Bachelor of Laws from the University of Ibadan, graduating with First Class Honors and at the top of her class. She later studied at the Nigerian Law School, from which she also graduated with First Class Honors. Dr. Katz is currently a postdoc in Grants Operations Management and Creative Engagement at UNC Chapel Hill. She was previously a postdoc in the History Department at Duke University, and a Visiting Assisting Professor at Loyola University New Orleans. She received her PhD in African History from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Set in Colonial Northern Nigeria, this book confronts a paradox: the state insisted on its separation from religion even as it governed its multireligious population through what remained of the precolonial caliphate. Entangled Domains: Empire, Law and Religion in Northern Nigeria (Cambridge UP, 2023) grapples with this history to offer a provocative account of secularism as a contested yet contingent mode of governing religion and religious difference. Drawing on detailed archival research, Rabiat Akande vividly illustrates constitutional struggles triggered by the colonial state's governance of religion and interrogates the legacy of that governance agenda in the postcolonial state. This book is a novel commentary on the dynamic interplay between law, faith, identity, and power in the context of the modern state's emergence from colonial processes. Dr. Akande is currently an Assistant Professor in the Osgoode Hall Law School at York University in Canada and chairs the international legal history project at the African Institute of International Law in Arusha. Previously, she was a postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies as an Academy Scholar from 2019-2021. She received her Doctor of Juridical Science (SJD) degree from Harvard Law School in 2019 with her dissertation, “Navigating Entanglements: Contestations over Religion-State Relations in British Northern Nigeria, c. 1890-1978” receiving the Law and Society in the Muslim World Prize. At Harvard University, Dr. Akande held the Clark Byse fellowship at the Law School and was a Dissertation Fellow and Graduate Student Associate at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs. She also served on the editorial board of the Harvard International Law Journal. Prior to her graduate work, Dr. Akande obtained her Bachelor of Laws from the University of Ibadan, graduating with First Class Honors and at the top of her class. She later studied at the Nigerian Law School, from which she also graduated with First Class Honors. Dr. Katz is currently a postdoc in Grants Operations Management and Creative Engagement at UNC Chapel Hill. She was previously a postdoc in the History Department at Duke University, and a Visiting Assisting Professor at Loyola University New Orleans. She received her PhD in African History from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

Set in Colonial Northern Nigeria, this book confronts a paradox: the state insisted on its separation from religion even as it governed its multireligious population through what remained of the precolonial caliphate. Entangled Domains: Empire, Law and Religion in Northern Nigeria (Cambridge UP, 2023) grapples with this history to offer a provocative account of secularism as a contested yet contingent mode of governing religion and religious difference. Drawing on detailed archival research, Rabiat Akande vividly illustrates constitutional struggles triggered by the colonial state's governance of religion and interrogates the legacy of that governance agenda in the postcolonial state. This book is a novel commentary on the dynamic interplay between law, faith, identity, and power in the context of the modern state's emergence from colonial processes. Dr. Akande is currently an Assistant Professor in the Osgoode Hall Law School at York University in Canada and chairs the international legal history project at the African Institute of International Law in Arusha. Previously, she was a postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies as an Academy Scholar from 2019-2021. She received her Doctor of Juridical Science (SJD) degree from Harvard Law School in 2019 with her dissertation, “Navigating Entanglements: Contestations over Religion-State Relations in British Northern Nigeria, c. 1890-1978” receiving the Law and Society in the Muslim World Prize. At Harvard University, Dr. Akande held the Clark Byse fellowship at the Law School and was a Dissertation Fellow and Graduate Student Associate at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs. She also served on the editorial board of the Harvard International Law Journal. Prior to her graduate work, Dr. Akande obtained her Bachelor of Laws from the University of Ibadan, graduating with First Class Honors and at the top of her class. She later studied at the Nigerian Law School, from which she also graduated with First Class Honors. Dr. Katz is currently a postdoc in Grants Operations Management and Creative Engagement at UNC Chapel Hill. She was previously a postdoc in the History Department at Duke University, and a Visiting Assisting Professor at Loyola University New Orleans. She received her PhD in African History from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-studies

Set in Colonial Northern Nigeria, this book confronts a paradox: the state insisted on its separation from religion even as it governed its multireligious population through what remained of the precolonial caliphate. Entangled Domains: Empire, Law and Religion in Northern Nigeria (Cambridge UP, 2023) grapples with this history to offer a provocative account of secularism as a contested yet contingent mode of governing religion and religious difference. Drawing on detailed archival research, Rabiat Akande vividly illustrates constitutional struggles triggered by the colonial state's governance of religion and interrogates the legacy of that governance agenda in the postcolonial state. This book is a novel commentary on the dynamic interplay between law, faith, identity, and power in the context of the modern state's emergence from colonial processes. Dr. Akande is currently an Assistant Professor in the Osgoode Hall Law School at York University in Canada and chairs the international legal history project at the African Institute of International Law in Arusha. Previously, she was a postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies as an Academy Scholar from 2019-2021. She received her Doctor of Juridical Science (SJD) degree from Harvard Law School in 2019 with her dissertation, “Navigating Entanglements: Contestations over Religion-State Relations in British Northern Nigeria, c. 1890-1978” receiving the Law and Society in the Muslim World Prize. At Harvard University, Dr. Akande held the Clark Byse fellowship at the Law School and was a Dissertation Fellow and Graduate Student Associate at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs. She also served on the editorial board of the Harvard International Law Journal. Prior to her graduate work, Dr. Akande obtained her Bachelor of Laws from the University of Ibadan, graduating with First Class Honors and at the top of her class. She later studied at the Nigerian Law School, from which she also graduated with First Class Honors. Dr. Katz is currently a postdoc in Grants Operations Management and Creative Engagement at UNC Chapel Hill. She was previously a postdoc in the History Department at Duke University, and a Visiting Assisting Professor at Loyola University New Orleans. She received her PhD in African History from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/law

Set in Colonial Northern Nigeria, this book confronts a paradox: the state insisted on its separation from religion even as it governed its multireligious population through what remained of the precolonial caliphate. Entangled Domains: Empire, Law and Religion in Northern Nigeria (Cambridge UP, 2023) grapples with this history to offer a provocative account of secularism as a contested yet contingent mode of governing religion and religious difference. Drawing on detailed archival research, Rabiat Akande vividly illustrates constitutional struggles triggered by the colonial state's governance of religion and interrogates the legacy of that governance agenda in the postcolonial state. This book is a novel commentary on the dynamic interplay between law, faith, identity, and power in the context of the modern state's emergence from colonial processes. Dr. Akande is currently an Assistant Professor in the Osgoode Hall Law School at York University in Canada and chairs the international legal history project at the African Institute of International Law in Arusha. Previously, she was a postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies as an Academy Scholar from 2019-2021. She received her Doctor of Juridical Science (SJD) degree from Harvard Law School in 2019 with her dissertation, “Navigating Entanglements: Contestations over Religion-State Relations in British Northern Nigeria, c. 1890-1978” receiving the Law and Society in the Muslim World Prize. At Harvard University, Dr. Akande held the Clark Byse fellowship at the Law School and was a Dissertation Fellow and Graduate Student Associate at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs. She also served on the editorial board of the Harvard International Law Journal. Prior to her graduate work, Dr. Akande obtained her Bachelor of Laws from the University of Ibadan, graduating with First Class Honors and at the top of her class. She later studied at the Nigerian Law School, from which she also graduated with First Class Honors. Dr. Katz is currently a postdoc in Grants Operations Management and Creative Engagement at UNC Chapel Hill. She was previously a postdoc in the History Department at Duke University, and a Visiting Assisting Professor at Loyola University New Orleans. She received her PhD in African History from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

Set in Colonial Northern Nigeria, this book confronts a paradox: the state insisted on its separation from religion even as it governed its multireligious population through what remained of the precolonial caliphate. Entangled Domains: Empire, Law and Religion in Northern Nigeria (Cambridge UP, 2023) grapples with this history to offer a provocative account of secularism as a contested yet contingent mode of governing religion and religious difference. Drawing on detailed archival research, Rabiat Akande vividly illustrates constitutional struggles triggered by the colonial state's governance of religion and interrogates the legacy of that governance agenda in the postcolonial state. This book is a novel commentary on the dynamic interplay between law, faith, identity, and power in the context of the modern state's emergence from colonial processes. Dr. Akande is currently an Assistant Professor in the Osgoode Hall Law School at York University in Canada and chairs the international legal history project at the African Institute of International Law in Arusha. Previously, she was a postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies as an Academy Scholar from 2019-2021. She received her Doctor of Juridical Science (SJD) degree from Harvard Law School in 2019 with her dissertation, “Navigating Entanglements: Contestations over Religion-State Relations in British Northern Nigeria, c. 1890-1978” receiving the Law and Society in the Muslim World Prize. At Harvard University, Dr. Akande held the Clark Byse fellowship at the Law School and was a Dissertation Fellow and Graduate Student Associate at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs. She also served on the editorial board of the Harvard International Law Journal. Prior to her graduate work, Dr. Akande obtained her Bachelor of Laws from the University of Ibadan, graduating with First Class Honors and at the top of her class. She later studied at the Nigerian Law School, from which she also graduated with First Class Honors. Dr. Katz is currently a postdoc in Grants Operations Management and Creative Engagement at UNC Chapel Hill. She was previously a postdoc in the History Department at Duke University, and a Visiting Assisting Professor at Loyola University New Orleans. She received her PhD in African History from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/british-studies

New research has suggested that eating snakes and other reptiles is better for the environment as opposed to traditional meat sources. Dr Paul Aust, Director of the African Institute of Applied Herpetology discusses.

The African Institute in Sharjah will host a two-day symposium celebrating the life and legacy of literary icon Toni Morrison on February 28 – 29, 2024, at The Africa Hall, in Sharjah. Professor Salah and Ford Morrison joined us on the Morning Majlis to discuss the expectations from the event. This special event inaugurates the Toni Morrison Senior Fellowship in African Diaspora Literature and Cultural Studies, featuring two film screenings, including one by Morrison's son, and insightful discussions on her legacy. Listen to #Pulse95Radio in the UAE by tuning in on your radio (95.00 FM) or online on our website: www.pulse95radio.com ************************ Follow us on Social. www.facebook.com/pulse95radio www.twitter.com/pulse95radio www.instagram.com/pulse95radio www.youtube.com/pulse95radio

Host(s): Abram Nanney, Shane Chism, and Sabir Abdul-Haqq (www.yourebs.biz)Guest(s): Jerome Pesenti, founder of Sizzle AITopic: We've talked about AI many, many times on Everyday Tech. However, I think it's time for us to discuss how artificial intelligence can actually help and improve our lives. To help us with that, we welcome an expert in the development of AI to the show – Jerome Pesenti. Jerome has been a leader in the field of artificial intelligence for 25 years and has played a fundamental role in the advancement of tech companies like BenevolentAI, IBM, Meta, and now, Sizzle. His input and recommendations even helped shape the UK government's initiative to advance the artificial intelligence industry in the UK.You can find Jerome's TEDTalk that we mentioned on the show here: https://youtu.be/8zYp4yH4PoQYou can also find Jerome's talk at the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences here: https://youtu.be/pWTc6X92kGgEmail your tech questions and opinions to: everydaytech@mpbonline.org Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Host(s): Abram Nanney, Shane Chism, and Sabir Abdul-Haqq (www.yourebs.biz)Guest(s): Jerome Pesenti, founder of Sizzle AITopic: We've talked about AI many, many times on Everyday Tech. However, I think it's time for us to discuss how artificial intelligence can actually help and improve our lives. To help us with that, we welcome an expert in the development of AI to the show – Jerome Pesenti. Jerome has been a leader in the field of artificial intelligence for 25 years and has played a fundamental role in the advancement of tech companies like BenevolentAI, IBM, Meta, and now, Sizzle. His input and recommendations even helped shape the UK government's initiative to advance the artificial intelligence industry in the UK.You can find Jerome's TEDTalk that we mentioned on the show here: https://youtu.be/8zYp4yH4PoQYou can also find Jerome's talk at the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences here: https://youtu.be/pWTc6X92kGgEmail your tech questions and opinions to: everydaytech@mpbonline.org Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Since the COVID-pandemic and Russia's invasion in Ukraine, global fault lines have deepened. System rivalry is becoming a buzzword and Africa seems to be in the center of it. With the Russia-Africa Summit, which took place recently in St. Petersburg, the upcoming BRICS Summit in August in Johannesburg, and the Unite Nations Future Summit next year in New York there is a lot of discussion but also speculation in the international community about a new international order or a new world. While there is not necessarily alignment between and within BRICS and the states of the global south on how a new international system should be structured there is common push for a reform of the global governance intuitions. What role should Africa and Europe play to respond to challenges and opportunities of advancing the international rules-based system in a shifting geopolitical context? To that end Hanns Bühler from our Hanns Seidel Foundation office in South Africa talks to African and European scholars: - Dr. Jakkie Cilliers, Head of the African Futures and Innovation Team at African Institute for Security Studies headquartered in Pretoria and - Dr. Stefan Mair, Director of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs and Executive Chairman of the Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik (SWP)

Prof. Benjamin Lamptey is a meteorological (weather and climate) modeller with expertise in Database Management. He has been vital in developing Africa's climate science research and operations. In fact, he was a lead author of the recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) AR6 WG1. In September 2013, he joined the African Centre of Meteorological Applications for Development (ACMAD) in Niamey, Niger, as the Deputy Director-General (DDG). From 1st January 2017 to 31st December 2018, he became the Acting Director General of ACMAD cumulatively with the DDG position before joining the University of Leeds, UK, as a Cheney Fellow in 2019. Prior to joining ACMAD, he was the Acting Head of the Nautical Science Department and Acting Dean of the School of Graduate Studies at the Regional Maritime University in Accra, Ghana. He was a postdoctoral fellow at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado, USA, from 2005 to 2007 after obtaining his doctorate degree in Geosciences (with a minor in High-Performance Computing) from the Pennsylvania State University. He also holds Master's degrees in Meteorology (Penn State) and Applied and Agricultural Meteorology (the University of Reading. UK) and a Postgraduate Diploma in Computing and Information Systems (UK). He started his meteorology career as a Weather Forecaster at the Ghana Meteorological Agency (GMet), having been trained at the UK Meteorological Office College in Shinfield Park, Reading. And later became the Head of the Climatology Division. He serves on several International Committees and is Guest/Associate Editor of a number of Journals and lectures part-time in the Graduate programs of the West African Science Service Centre for Climate Change and Adapted Land Use (WASCAL), African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS) and the Pan African University for Water and Energy Science (PAUWES). His current passion is in the transition from research to operations. Get in Touch with Prof Lamptey African SWIFT Cheney Public Lecture: From Extreme Weather to Climate Change in Africa- https://youtu.be/X-gRnVhTJ6s Dr Ben Lamptey: Cheney Fellow continues African SWIFT role from Ghana - https://africanswift.org/2021/01/12/farewell-to-dr-ben-lamptey/ Researchgate - https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Benjamin-Lamptey LinkedIn - Benjamin Lamptey ------- GLC aims to share knowledge and education with our cherished listeners through this Podcast. It's about time we connect the pieces: sustainability is a sacrifice but are we ready? Get involved Website - https://glcpodcast.ecoametsolutions.com/. Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/ecoametsolutions. Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/ecoametsolutions/. LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/green-living-chats-podcast. Twitter - https://twitter.com/GLCpodcast. Share - https://linktr.ee/ecoametsolutions. Get in touch with the GLC podcast via mail: glcpodcast@ecoametsolutions.com. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/ecoametsolutions/message

In this episode, we explore the life and teachings of the Senegalese Sufi saint and social reformer Ahmadou Bamba (d. 1927), who led a movement of resistence against French colonialism through nonviolence.Thank you to Brahdamon for kindly allowing me to use his footage. Check out his channel here:https://www.youtube.com/c/BrahdamonVideos used:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Ovb44sbHR8&t=221sSources/Suggested Reading:Babou, Cheikh Anta (2007). "Fighting the Greater Jihad: Amadu Bamba and the founding of the Mouridiyya of Senegal, 1853-1913". Ohio University Press.Clark, Andrew Francis (1999). "Imperialism, Independence, and Islam in Senegal and Mali". Africa Today, Volume 46, Number 3/4, Summer/Autumn. Indiana University Press.Creevey, Lucy E. (1985). "Muslim Brotherhoods and Politics in Senegal in 1985". The Journal of Modern African Studies, Vol. 23, No. 4. Cambridge University Press.Holm, Filip (2018). "The Architecture of Pilgrimage: a study on the Ziyara Bogal and charismatic authority in the Tijaniyya". Master's Thesis. Södertörn University.Kimball, Michelle R. (2018). "Shaykh Ahmadou Bamba: A Peacemaker for Our Time". The Other Press Sdn. Bhd.Mbacké, Khadim (2005). "Sufism and Religious Brotherhoods in Senegal". Markus Weiner Publishers.McLaughlin, Fiona (1997). "Islam and popular music in Senegal: The emergence of a new tradition". Africa: Journal of the international African Institute.Van Hoven, Ed (2000). "The nation turbaned? The construction of nationalist identities in Senegal. Journal of Religion in Africa, Vol. 30, Fasc. 2. Brill.#Senegal #Sufism #Islam Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

If there were fewer of us, would the amount of greenhouse gasses we emit reduce? It's a question that often creeps up in discussions about climate change. Studies show that the global population will decline eventually and populations in many rich nations are already declining. However, 11,000 scientists signed a paper warning of “untold suffering due to the climate crisis” unless society transforms, including the reversal of population growth. But an analysis by the United Nations found that affluence has a greater impact on the climate than population. When we talk about overpopulation, what are we really saying and where does the conversation go from here? This episode was first broadcast on 13th December 2021. Presenters Neal Razzell and Kate Lamble are joined by: Nyovani Madise, head of the Malawi office of the African Institute for Development Policy. Anu Ramaswami, professor of civil and environmental engineering at Princeton. Arvind Ravikumar, professor in energy transition and climate policy at the University of Texas. Producer: Darin Graham Reporter: Rajesh Joshi Series producer: Alex Lewis Editor: Emma Rippon Sound engineer: Tom Brignell Production coordinator: Siobhan Reed and Sophie Hill

In the second episode of the new series of A Future Made, a podcast by Heriot-Watt University, Anna Ploszajski and Robbie Armstrong turn the spotlight on Africa to find out how an inspiring partnership between the University and the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS) is changing the lives of students and academics alike, and has sparked a quest to find 'the next Einstein' within Africa. The series showcases Heriot-Watt University's innovative work in science, business, technology, design and engineering - which is helping to change the future, solve the problems of today, and make an impact on the global stage.

The Groove Cafe: Crystal talks to investigative journalist and Executive Director of the African Institute of Investigative Journalists Solomon Serwanjja

Angela Tabiri and Adidja Amani tell Akin Jimoh how they combine family life with career commitments, helped by strong networks of family support.In Ghana, where Tabiri researches quantum algebra at the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences in Accra, the government requires working women to stay at home for three months after having a child. Once they return to their jobs, they can leave work at 2 p.m. until their child is six months old, she says.“We don't have infrastructure to support young mums in Ghana,” Tabiri adds, citing the absence of nursing rooms and nurseries in academic institutions.mani, deputy director for vaccination at Cameroon's Ministry of Public Health in Yaoundé, and a lecturer in medicine at the University of Yaoundé, points out that it is now government policy to admit equal numbers of men and women to her faculty of medicine. Despite this, women are still under-represented at senior levels.“I'm a mother of two. I want my boys to be an example and to help the women around them,” she says.“Educate our boys — educate men around the world to be agents of change by supporting women.”This is the penultimate episode in an eight-part series on science in Africa hosted by Akin Jimoh, chief editor of Nature Africa. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Trust Stamp Inc chief innovation officer Raman Narayanswamy tells Proactive it has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Rwanda's African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS), outlining a mutual desire for institutional cooperation to focus on education and research aimed at further equity and inclusion for individuals of all races and ethnologies through advancements in biometrics and identity authentication. Under the MoU, Trust Stamp and AIMS will identify and address systemic inequities resulting from race and ethnicity-based discrepancies in the performance of biometric systems, the company said.

A latter-day Austen, an academic, a romantic, a comic, a caustic chronicler of the commonplace . . . The novelist Barbara Pym became beloved and Booker Prize-nominated in the late twentieth century, yet many rejections, years in the literary wilderness and manuscripts stored in linen cupboards preceded her revival. Paula Byrne, author of The Adventures of Miss Barbara Pym, and Lucy Scholes, critic, Paris Review columnist and editor at McNally Editions, join the Slightly Foxed team to plumb the depths and scale the peaks of Barbara Pym's writing, life and loves. From Nazi Germany to the African Institute; from London's bedsit land to parish halls; from unrequited love affairs with unsuitable men to an epistolary friendship with Philip Larkin; and from rejection by Jonathan Cape to overnight success via the TLS, we trace Pym's life through her novels, visiting the Bodleian and Boots lending libraries along the way. There's joy in Some Tame Gazelle, loneliness in Quartet in Autumn, and humour and all human experience in between, with excellent women consistently her theme. We then turn from Pym to other writers under or above the radar, finding darkness in Elizabeth Taylor, tragicomedy in Margaret Kennedy and real and surreal rackety lives in Barbara Comyns. To round out a cast of excellent women, we discover Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca was foretold in Elizabeth von Arnim's Vera, and we recommend an eccentric trip with Jane Bowles and her Two Serious Ladies, as well as theatrical tales from a raconteur in Eileen Atkins's memoir.  (Episode duration: 57 minutes; 16 seconds) Books Mentioned We may be able to get hold of second-hand copies of the out-of-print titles listed below. Please get in touch with Jess in the Slightly Foxed office for more information. Flora Thompson, Lark Rise and Over to Candleford & Candleford Green, Slightly Foxed Edition Nos. 58 and 59 (1:39) Paula Byrne, The Adventures of Miss Barbara Pym (2:11) Aldous Huxley, Chrome Yellow is out of print (4:28) Barbara Pym, Quartet in Autumn (6:33) Barbara Pym, The Sweet Dove Died is out of print (8:16) Barbara Pym, Some Tame Gazelle (14:07) Barbara Pym, Excellent Women (19:06) Barbara Pym, A Glass of Blessings (22:14) Barbara Pym, A Few Green Leaves is out of print (32:28) Nicola Beauman, The Other Elizabeth Taylor (36:33) Elizabeth Taylor, Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont (37:00) Elizabeth Taylor, Angel (38:27) Barbara Comyns, The Vet's Daughter (41:16) Barbara Comyns, The House of Dolls (42:16) Barbara Comyns, Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead (42:45) Barbara Comyns, Our Spoons Came from Woolworths (43:03) Barbara Comyns, A Touch of Mistletoe (43:46) Elizabeth von Arnim, Vera (47:47) Margaret Kennedy, Troy Chimneys, McNally Editions (48:59) Jane Bowles, Two Serious Ladies (50:37) Eileen Atkins, Will She Do? (52:39) Related Slightly Foxed Articles Not So Bad, Really, Frances Donnelly on Barbara Pym, Issue 11 Hands across the Tea-shop Table, Sue Gee on Elizabeth Taylor, A Game of Hide and Seek and Nicola Beauman, The Other Elizabeth Taylor, Issue 58 There for the Duration, Juliet Gardiner on Elizabeth Taylor, At Mrs Lippincote's, Issue 13 Sophia Fairclough and Me, Sophie Breese on the novels of Barbara Comyns, Issue 42 Other Links McNally Editions is an American imprint devoted to hidden gems (2:47) In the Paris Review Re-Covered column, Lucy Scholes exhumes the out-of-print and forgotten books that shouldn't be Lucy Scholes is the host of the Virago OurShelves podcast The Barbara Pym Society Opening music: Preludio from Violin Partita No.3 in E Major by Bach The Slightly Foxed Podcast is hosted by Philippa Lamb and produced by Podcastable

Professor Hoffmann has spent much of the past decade working with the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences, its Quantum Leap Africa initiative, and a host of other groups and NGOs across the African continent, all focused on the support and pursuit of higher mathematics. And yet, in her own words, she's still “very junior” at her home institution herself. How is this possible?

Professor Hoffmann has spent much of the past decade working with the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences, its Quantum Leap Africa initiative, and a host of other groups and NGOs across the African continent, all focused on the support and pursuit of higher mathematics. And yet, in her own words, she’s still “very junior” at her home institution herself. How is this possible?

If there were fewer of us, would the amount of greenhouse gasses we emit reduce? It's a question that often creeps up in discussions about climate change. Studies show that the global population will decline eventually and populations in many rich nations are already declining. However, 11,000 scientists signed a paper warning of “untold suffering due to the climate crisis” unless society transforms, including the reversal of population growth. But an analysis by the United Nations found that affluence has a greater impact on the climate than population. When we talk about overpopulation, what are we really saying and where does the conversation go from here? Presenters Neal Razzell and Kate Lamble are joined by: Nyovani Madise, head of the Malawi office of the African Institute for Development Policy. Anu Ramaswami, professor of civil and environmental engineering at Princeton. Arvind Ravikumar, professor in energy transition and climate policy at the University of Texas. Producer: Darin Graham Reporter: Rajesh Joshi Series producer: Alex Lewis Editor: Emma Rippon Sound engineer: Tom Brignell

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) latest report on global warming clearly shows that human influence is responsible for warming the atmosphere. In today's conversation, Africa Climate Conversations ask Dr. Mouhamadou Bamba Sylla, the AIMS-Canada Research Chair in Climate Change Science at the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences Rwanda, if the pledges made at the just concluded 26th UN summit on climate change (COP26) in Glasgow lead to reduced warming. One hundred four countries, among them the United States of America and the European Union, pledged to cut their methane emissions by 30 percent by 2030. Africa is pushing to exploit its natural gas as a baseload to catalyze uptake of renewable energy. Bamba Sylla, an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Working Group 1 lead author, also expounds on why methane emissions are critical if the world is to stay within the Paris agreement temperatures goals? At Glasgow, the scientific community said that the largest emitters must reduce their emissions by a factor of 30, and the developing nations can increase their emission by factor three for the world to stay within the global carbon budget in a fairway. Can Africa eat fairly, meet its development agenda without emitting too many emissions into the atmosphere.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) latest report on global warming clearly shows that human influence is responsible for warming the atmosphere. In today's conversation, Africa Climate Conversations ask Dr. Mouhamadou Bamba Sylla, the AIMS-Canada Research Chair in Climate Change Science at the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences Rwanda, if the pledges made at the just concluded 26th UN summit on climate change (COP26) in Glasgow lead to reduced warming. One hundred four countries, among them the United States of America and the European Union, pledged to cut their methane emissions by 30 percent by 2030. Africa is pushing to exploit its natural gas as a baseload to catalyze uptake of renewable energy. Bamba Sylla, an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Working Group 1 lead author, also expounds on why methane emissions are critical if the world is to stay within the Paris agreement temperatures goals? At Glasgow, the scientific community said that the largest emitters must reduce their emissions by a factor of 30, and the developing nations can increase their emission by factor three for the world to stay within the global carbon budget in a fairway. Can Africa eat fairly, meet its development agenda without emitting too many emissions into the atmosphere.

Hello everyone! Welcome to episode 80.Dr. Joseph Malinzi, originally from Uganda but now based in Eswatini, is my guest today. In this episode, he takes us on a journey through his academic career, which began in a Ugandan school. He excelled in high school and was given the opportunity to pursue a Bachelor of Science in Education at Makerere University. Joseph admits that there was a time in his life when he had no clear career plan. He applied for a postgraduate diploma at The African Institute for Mathematical Sciences in Cape Town, South Africa. This was a 10-month accelerated postgraduate program. He then went on to do a master's degree at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, followed by a PhD at the same institution. He is currently a lecturer in the mathematics department at the University of Eswatini and a honorary research fellow at Durban University of Technology. Dr. Joseph Malinzi's research is focused on mathematical disease modeling. He constructs and analyzes mathematical models to describe and solve problems that arise in nature. His research interests span dynamical systems, biomathematics, computational mathematics, and big data. Stay tuned as we learn more about this and much more!Facebook & LinkedIn: Joseph MalinziSupport the show (https://paypal.me/RootofSciPod?locale.x=en_US)

Prof. Johan de Villiers holds numerous degrees relating to Maths and Science, notably a Ph.D. from Cambridge University. Since he retired as a Professor at Stellenbosch University, he's received the title of Extraordinary Professor in Mathematics and currently holds a Senior Researcher position at the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS) in Muizenberg. He has also written two books, but his passion extends beyond numbers, however, as he is also the conductor of our very own local Libertas choir, which has performed internationally. ---- Guest Links ----- https://www.amazon.com/Wavelet-Subdivision-Methods-Rendering-Surfaces/dp/1439812152/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1606412001&sr=1-2 https://www.amazon.com/Mathematics-Approximation-Textbooks-Science-Engineering-ebook/dp/B00FE11DWE/ref=sr_1_3?dchild=1&qid=1606412001&refinements=p_27%3AJohan+de+Villiers&s=books&sr=1-3 Libertas Choir: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cVnAC7-HkaQ&ab_channel=LibertasChoir WorldView is a media company that delivers in-depth conversations, debates, round-table discussions, and general entertainment to inevitably broaden your WorldView. ---- Links ----- https://twitter.com/Broadworldview https://web.facebook.com/BroadWorldView You can donate at https://www.patreon.com/user?u=46136545&fan_landing=true Music: https://www.bensound.com

Melissa talks with Hope Chigudu, reflecting back on the 20-21 May Global Gathering entitled “Living our values: Care, culture and power in aid organisations” held by the CHS Alliance.In their conversation they cover: The connections between power, culture and care The importance of leadership, of using language that people can understand in different contexts, of raising awareness about power in our spaces The value of rituals, for individuals and communities The idea of accountability: In a world of external accountability and upward accountability, how are we accountable to ourselves? Ideas for how to follow-up the Global Gathering in a way that takes into consideration enthusiasm and energy Hope Chigudu is feminist activist and a gender, organisational and development practitioner. In her earlier days in the women's movement, she co-founded the Zimbabwe Women's Resource Centre and Network. She later used her skills in governance and management to serve as Chair of the Board of Urgent Action Fund-Africa and prior to this as chair of the Global Fund for Women. Hope is an internationally renowned consultant with experience in "healing" organisations, governance and creative monitoring and evaluation. She co-authored with Rudo Chigudu “Strategies for Building Organisations with a Soul.” To learn more, check out: 10 session recordings from the Global Gathering on the CHS Alliance YouTube page: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLh1w1Ldo3QjUh7q_coN5ifrnUZqlop8cI “Strategies for Building an Organisation with a Soul” by Hope Chigudu and Rudo Chigudu, edited by Jessica Horn, published by the African Institute for Integrated Responses to VAWG and HIV/AIDS (AIR): http://airforafrica.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Strategies-for-Building-an-Organisation-with-Soul-WEB.pdf   The CHS Alliance Initiative to Cultivate Caring Compassionate Aid Organizations: https://www.chsalliance.org/get-support/article/cultivating-caring-compassionate-aid-organisations/ ***We would like to give a special thanks to the Initiative's supporters: the CHS Alliance members, the Government of Luxembourg, the UK's Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (DFCO) and the Netherlands. Thanks to ICVA for collaborating in this joint project engaging leaders. And thanks to Ziada Abeid for editing the show.***

KL110 Nankhonde Van Den Broek Top 30 Coach in the World – Global Gurus and Founder & CEO at Zanga African Metrics Collaborative Global Leadership Development Episode Summary I enjoyed discussing leadership development in the land of Zambia and the continent of Africa with one of the Top 30 coaches in the world—Nankhonde Kasonde-van den Broek! Listen to this episode to understand how she helps develop leaders locally to impact globally. Bio Nankhonde Kasonde-van den Broek is a development activist and serial entrepreneur. She is the Founder and Lead Consultant at Nankhonde Kasonde Consultancy, Founder and Creative Director at KHONDE (www.khondezambia.com), Founder and CEO at ZANGA African Metrics (www.zangametrics.com). After a decade of working in international development and international finance globally with the United Nations and the Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria, she returned to Zambia to pursue her purpose and desire to contribute to her country's economy the broader African development agenda. Nankhonde is an internationally certified Executive Coach &; Organizational change architect. She has over 20 years of experience in multinationals, international organizations, and Governments. She is an accomplished professional with a wealth of African, international and multi-cultural knowledge in designing and leading large-scale change across multiple sectors. Nankhonde has lived and worked in New York, Geneva, Dakar, and Lilongwe. She has traveled extensively and supported programs across Africa and South East Asia. Nankhonde is a member of the Africa List, a group of future African Leaders in emerging markets (cohort 2020). Nankhonde is a Marshall Goldsmith 50 Global Leading Coach and a member of the MG100. She is a Board Member at the Lusaka Apex Medical University in Lusaka, Zambia, and a Board Member at Sanlam Life Insurance Zambia Ltd (Part of the Sanlam Group, South Africa). Nankhonde is a graduate of the renowned HEC Paris Business School (France) &; Oxford University (U.K.) joint Executive Specialized Masters Degree in Consulting &; Coaching for Change. In addition, she holds an MBA specializing in Project Management from the African Institute of Management (Dakar, Senegal), an MSc in Management from the University of Quebec at Chicoutimi (Quebec, Canada), and a B.A. in Management from Webster University (Geneva, Switzerland). She is fluent in French and is married with two children. Website https://www.zangametrics.com/ LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/nankhondevandenbroek/   Leadership Quote "It takes extraordinary effort to stop doing something in our comfort zone (because it's painless or familiar or mildly pleasurable) to start something difficult that will be good for us in the long run." Marshall Goldsmith Subscribe, share and review on Apple Podcasts! https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/keep-leading/id1461490512 Full Episode Transcripts and Detailed Guest Information www.KeepLeadingPodcast.com   Keep Leading LIVE (Live Recordings of the Keep Leading!® Podcast) www.KeepLeadingLive.com The Keep Leading!® podcast is for people passionate about leadership. It is dedicated to leadership development and insights. Join your host Eddie Turner, The Leadership Excelerator® as he speaks with accomplished leaders and people of influence across the globe as they share their journey to leadership excellence. Listen as they share leadership strategies, techniques, and insights. For more information visit https://eddieturnerllc.com or follow Eddie Turner on Twitter and Instagram at @eddieturnerjr. Like Eddie Turner LLC on Facebook. Connect with Eddie Turner on LinkedIn. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Summary Dorothy Nyambi took on the top leadership role in MEDA two years ago as the only person of color in the senior leadership team. She since then has led change with that awareness in mind:What do we mean by culture change, and how to see and operationalize it?Politics and power within an organization, from a change leader's perspective.How to lead and manage organizational change? What frameworks, resources, or tools are most valuable? Inclusion and diversity -- or lack of diversity -- in leadership. Dorothy's Bio Dorothy is President and Chief Executive of MEDA (Mennonite Economic Development Associates), a Canadian headquartered international economic development organization that creates business solutions to povertyFormer Executive Vice President of the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences Former Regional Director of the NGO Right to PlayDorothy was trained as a medical doctor, then moved upstream from being a technical person into organizational management and leadership Quotes“I will be bringing myself into it as a black woman driving to bring change to a white organization in a sector where white saviorism and specifically white male dominance is predominant. That will be the lens that will drive my change journey, but a journey that I am proud of and which has lots of lessons for me”“As a former medical professional, I feel like I am in the upstream medical sector in international development”  We discussed: The role shift that MEDA is going through, from direct implementation to that of  convener, and what the implications are of that The “divided loyalties' of staff in international development - and the power and accolades that come with that, as well as a fear for a loss of identity  How institutional donor practices reinforce white saviorism How one can assess the appetite for change as an incoming CEO in an organization new to you How diverse organizations need to honor the lived experience of staff ResourcesWebsite: https://www.meda.org/ Dorothy's LinkedIn profileDorothy's Twitter handle Click here to subscribe to be alerted when new podcast episodes come out or when Tosca produces other thought leadership pieces.Or email Tosca at tosca@5oaksconsulting.org if you want to talk about your social sector organization's needs, challenges, and opportunities.You can find Tosca's content by following her on her social media channels: Twitter LinkedIn Facebook Youtube 

For work and personal value, there's a growing emphasis on becoming multi-skilled based on the positive impact multi-talents can have on businesses. How about maintaining focus and not swaying? In this episode, I discuss the topic: How much variety do you need in a career? with Sampson Kofi Adotey Manager, Manager, Alumni Engagement and Research Reporting – Global Network at the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences Listen, subscribe, help share the word by leaving a 5-star review: https://anchor.fm/pointers-in-10 --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/pointers-in-10/message

On today's podcast, James Kinyangi, the coordinator for the climate and development special funds for Africa at the African development bank and Mohamad Bamba Sylla, a lead author at the intergovernmental panel on climate change – IPCC - and currently the research chair in climate change science at the African Institute for mathematical sciences Rwanda tacks us through the status of the investment in climate change information and how this is impacting the continents future developments plans.

On today's podcast, James Kinyangi, the coordinator for the climate and development special funds for Africa at the African development bank and Mohamad Bamba Sylla, a lead author at the intergovernmental panel on climate change – IPCC - and currently the research chair in climate change science at the African Institute for mathematical sciences Rwanda tacks us through the status of the investment in climate change information and how this is impacting the continents future developments plans.

Podcast: Unexpected Elements (LS 54 · TOP 0.5% what is this?)Episode: Rwanda's game changing coronavirus testPub date: 2020-07-11African scientists have developed a reliable, quick and cheap testing method which could be used by worldwide as the basis for mass testing programmes. The method, which produces highly accurate results, is built around mathematical algorithms developed at the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences in Kigali. We speak to Neil Turok who founded the institute, Leon Mutesa Professor of human genetics on the government coronavirus task force, and Wilfred Ndifon, the mathematical biologist who devised the algorithm. The virus is mutating as it spreads, but what does this mean? There is particular concern over changes to the spike protein, part of the virus needed to enter human cells. Jeremy Luban has been analysing this mechanism. So far he says ongoing genetic changes seem unlikely to impact on the effectiveness of treatments for Covid -19. And Heatwaves are increasing, particularly in tropical regions, that's the finding of a new analysis by climate scientist Sarah Perkins – Kirkpatrick. Worms are not the cutest of creatures. They're slimy, often associated with death and tend to bring on feelings of disgust in many of us. But listener Dinesh thinks they're underrated and wants to know whether earthworms could be the key to our planet's future agricultural success? He's an organic farmer in India's Tamil Nadu province who grows these annelids to add to the soil, and he wants Crowdscience to find out exactly what they're doing. Anand Jagatia dons his gardening gloves and digs the dirt on these remarkable creatures, discovering how they can help improve soil quality, prevent fields from becoming waterlogged, and improve microbial numbers, all of which has the potential to increase crop yield. But he also investigates the so-called ‘earthworm dilemma' and the idea that in some parts of the world, boreal forest worms are releasing carbon back into the atmosphere, which could have dangerous consequences for climate change. Main image: People stand in white circles drawn on the ground to adhere to social distancing in Kigali, Rwanda, on May 4, 2020, Photo by Simon Wohlfahrt / AFP via Getty ImagesThe podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC World Service, which is the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Listen Notes, Inc.

African scientists have developed a reliable, quick and cheap testing method which could be used by worldwide as the basis for mass testing programmes. The method, which produces highly accurate results, is built around mathematical algorithms developed at the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences in Kigali. We speak to Neil Turok who founded the institute, Leon Mutesa Professor of human genetics on the government coronavirus task force, and Wilfred Ndifon, the mathematical biologist who devised the algorithm. The virus is mutating as it spreads, but what does this mean? There is particular concern over changes to the spike protein, part of the virus needed to enter human cells. Jeremy Luban has been analysing this mechanism. So far he says ongoing genetic changes seem unlikely to impact on the effectiveness of treatments for Covid -19. And Heatwaves are increasing, particularly in tropical regions, that’s the finding of a new analysis by climate scientist Sarah Perkins – Kirkpatrick. Worms are not the cutest of creatures. They’re slimy, often associated with death and tend to bring on feelings of disgust in many of us. But listener Dinesh thinks they’re underrated and wants to know whether earthworms could be the key to our planet’s future agricultural success? He’s an organic farmer in India’s Tamil Nadu province who grows these annelids to add to the soil, and he wants Crowdscience to find out exactly what they’re doing. Anand Jagatia dons his gardening gloves and digs the dirt on these remarkable creatures, discovering how they can help improve soil quality, prevent fields from becoming waterlogged, and improve microbial numbers, all of which has the potential to increase crop yield. But he also investigates the so-called ‘earthworm dilemma’ and the idea that in some parts of the world, boreal forest worms are releasing carbon back into the atmosphere, which could have dangerous consequences for climate change. Main image: People stand in white circles drawn on the ground to adhere to social distancing in Kigali, Rwanda, on May 4, 2020, Photo by Simon Wohlfahrt / AFP via Getty Images

African scientists have developed a reliable, quick and cheap testing method which could be used by worldwide as the basis for mass testing programmes. The method, which produces highly accurate results, is built around mathematical algorithms developed at the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences in Kigali. We speak to Neil Turok who founded the institute, Leon Mutesa Professor of human genetics on the government coronavirus task force, and Wilfred Ndifon, the mathematical biologist who devised the algorithm. The virus is mutating as it spreads, but what does this mean? There is particular concern over changes to the spike protein, part of the virus needed to enter human cells. Jeremy Luban has been analysing this mechanism. So far he says ongoing genetic changes seem unlikely to impact on the effectiveness of treatments for Covid -19. And Heatwaves are increasing, particularly in tropical regions, that’s the finding of a new analysis by climate scientist Sarah Perkins – Kirkpatrick. Presenter: Roland Pease Producer: Julian Siddle Main image: People stand in white circles drawn on the ground to adhere to social distancing in Kigali, Rwanda, on May 4, 2020, Photo by Simon Wohlfahrt / AFP via Getty Images

Hosted by Dr. Jacinta Delhaize by herself! Dr. Daniel Cunnama will rejoin her with the next show. Season Two of The Cosmic Savannah is on it’s way! But in the meantime, our science-savvy listeners can get their fix at a very exciting live event that happened in Cape Town! Soapbox Science South Africa happened on Saturday 28th September 2019 at the Pierhead V&A Waterfront in Cape Town from 12pm until 3pm. It is a pop-up event where incredibly talented female scientists will stand on soap boxes and tell passers-by all about their jobs. Science topics ranged from astronomy to archaeology, forensics to atomic physics, gut bacteria to sea creatures, vaccines to renewable energy, and more! Today we hear from some of our speakers:   Ms. Harshna Jivan (@HershiesJ), School of Physics, University of the Witwatersrand, “At the centre of it all: The Atomic Nucleus.”   Dr. Kerryn Ashleigh Warren (@kerryn_warren / https://bonevolution.wordpress.com/ ), Dept of Archaeology, University of Cape Town, “There and back again: Excavating at Rising Star Caves.”   Ms. Mieke du Plessis (@the_patient_scientist / https://www.linkedin.com/in/mieke-du-plessis-71014183/ ), the Hatter Institute for Cardiovascular Research in Africa, University of Cape Town, “Bugs and brains: how your microbes influence your mind.”   Dr. Michelle Lochner (@doc__loc / http://doc-loc.blogspot.com/ ), African Institute for Mathematical Sciences/ South African Radio Astronomy Observatory “Mysteries of the universe unravelled by the rise of the machine.”   Dr. Marise Heyns ( http://www.forensicscience.uct.ac.za/ ), Division of Forensic Medicine and Toxicology, Department of Pathology, University of Cape Town, “CSI: Cool Science Interrogates.”   Dr. Edina Amponsah-Dacosta (@eddiedacosta2 / http://soapboxscience.org/we-should-all-be-talking-about-vaccines-meet-dr-edina-amponsah-dacosta/ ), Vaccines for Africa Initiative, University of Cape Town, “Vaccines Are Us!”   Dr. Natasha Karenyi (@Natasha_Karenyi / http://www.biologicalsciences.uct.ac.za/bio/staff/academic/karenyi ), University of Cape Town, “What lies beneath the waves: small players on a large stage.”   Dr. Natasha Ross (@NatashaUWC), Department of chemistry, University of the Western Cape “It is your attitude, not your aptitude, that determines your altitude # Unlike protons, I don’t deal with negativity! :-)”   Associate Professor Liesl Zuhlke (@lieslzuhlke / http://www.chdru.uct.ac.za/ ), Red Cross war memorial children’s hospital, “Peas, almonds and fists: saving children’s hearts.”   Ms. Edith Phalane  (@EdithPhalane1 / http://www.nwu.ac.za/ ), North-West University, “Keeping your heart healthy: five easy steps to follow.”   Dr. Lucia Marchetti, Chief organizer of Soapbox Science South Africa.   We've added a new way to donate to 365 Days of Astronomy to support editing, hosting, and production costs. Just visit: https://www.patreon.com/365DaysOfAstronomy and donate as much as you can! Share the podcast with your friends and send the Patreon link to them too! Every bit helps! Thank you! ------------------------------------ Do go visit http://astrogear.spreadshirt.com/ for cool Astronomy Cast and CosmoQuest t-shirts, coffee mugs and other awesomeness! http://cosmoquest.org/Donate This show is made possible through your donations. Thank you! (Haven't donated? It's not too late! Just click!) The 365 Days of Astronomy Podcast is produced by Astrosphere New Media. http://www.astrosphere.org/ Visit us on the web at 365DaysOfAstronomy.org or email us at info@365DaysOfAstronomy.org.

Tadashi Tokieda is a professor in the Department of Mathematics, Stanford University.  He grew up as a painter in Japan, became a classical philologist in France, and has been an applied mathematician in Europe and elsewhere.  He is active in outreach in the developing world, especially via the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences.  At the last International Congress of Mathematicians he gave a plenary public lecture, and his demos are popular on the youtube channel Numberphile. We sit down for an enthralling chat with Prof. Tokeida that takes us on journey through mathematics, child prodigies and how language frames science. Get ready for an enthralling 30 minutes! For more from Prof. Tokeida, see his website at MSRI

Written & Produced by Shlomo The Great. © 2019 S. E. Y. D. All rights reserved. SHLOMOTION™ = reg. tm. Order voice overs, ghost writing poetry services and much more at https://www.fiverr.com/shlomoking. Follow us on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/StratosphericHeights/ and everywhere else online @shlomotion. Purchase SHLOMOTION™ merch at https://society6.com/shlomotion. Support our future poems, plays and short stories at https://www.patreon.com/SHLOMOTION. View all the best work from the SHLOMOTION™ Universe at https://shlomotion.org/highlights. Track List. PROSPERITY (ft. Dr. Bello Sambo). LEVITATION™ (ft. Norma). "Emerging Economies" II. Magnitude & Magnificence. African Institute of Economic Development & Acceleration (ft. Dr. Bello Sambo). African Institute of Rail Transportation Infrastructure (ft. Oluwaseun Ola). African Institute of Solar Energy Research (ft. Dr. Bello Sambo). African Institute of Materials Science Research (ft. Oluwaseun Ola). THE INTERVENTION. Music in this playlist by Blue Dot Sessions. PROSPERITY: Plataxian Cairo To Cape Town: Lord Weasel "Emerging Economies" II: The Telling Magnitude & Magnificence: Denzel Sprak AIEDA: Dance of Felt AIRTI: Plum King AIMSR: Rose Ornamental THE INTERVENTION: March on Gumdrop Field www.strat0s.com --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/shlomotion/message

This discussion is from the SHLOMOTION Archives and was originally recorded on the 4th of July 2019. It was one of many initial talks between engineers in the early days of constructing the Levi series trains. © 2019 S. E. Y. D. SHLOMOTION™ = reg. tm. Order voice overs, ghost writing poetry services and much more at https://www.fiverr.com/shlomoking. Follow us on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/StratosphericHeights/ and everywhere else online @shlomotion. Purchase SHLOMOTION™ merch at https://society6.com/shlomotion. Support our future poems, plays and short stories at https://www.patreon.com/SHLOMOTION. View all the best work from the SHLOMOTION™ Universe at https://shlomotion.org/highlights. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/shlomotion/message

This discussion is from the SHLOMOTION Archives and was originally recorded on the 4th of July 2019. It was one of many initial talks between engineers in the early days of constructing the Levi series trains. © 2019 S. E. Y. D. All rights reserved. SHLOMOTION™ = reg. tm. Order voice overs, ghost writing poetry services and much more at https://www.fiverr.com/shlomoking. Follow us on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/StratosphericHeights/ and everywhere else online @shlomotion. Purchase SHLOMOTION™ merch at https://society6.com/shlomotion. Support our future poems, plays and short stories at https://www.patreon.com/SHLOMOTION. View all the best work from the SHLOMOTION™ Universe at https://shlomotion.org/highlights. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/shlomotion/message

What's in this episode? Hello listeners and welcome back to The Edtech Podcast, the show about improving the dialogue between “ed” and “tech” for better innovation and impact. This week we share recordings made live at the launch of the European Edtech Network during London Edtech Week.  For those who have been following the news, the ambitions of the network are interesting in the wake of Alt Schools pivot after raising nearly $200 million; many level the perceived failure or change of direction at Alt School to the lack of educators at the helm, relying only on the silicon valley faith in everything tech. We also throw in a few listener messages and some news from the world of edtech events.  Enjoy and have a great week! People Sophie Bailey is the Founder and Presenter of The Edtech Podcast | Twitter: @podcastedtech  Listener messages;  Samuel Munyuwiny from the African Institute for Children’s Studies calling in from Nairobi, Kenya | Twitter: @SMunyuwiny Art Fridrich, A Higher Vision, USA | Twitter: @Ahighervision Event news from;  Anni Mansikkaoja, Dare to Learn | Twitter: @Dare_ToLearn Ben Sowter, Senior VP at QS to talk about Reimagine Education | Twitter: @bensowter Guests; Avi Warshavsky, CEO, MindCET | Twitter: @aviwarshavsky Cyril Ghanem, Head of Business Development, AppScho | Twitter: @AppScho Leila Guerra, Assistant Dean of Programmes, Imperial College Business School |Twitter: @leila_guerra Professor Rose Luckin, Centred Learning Design at UCL and Director of EDUCATE | Twitter: @Knowldgillusion Angela Mcfarlane, | Twitter: @AngelaMcFarlane Katy Fryatt, Founder & CEO, Learnit | Twitter: @katyfryatt Vic Vuchic, Chief Innovation Officer at Digital Promise Global and Executive Director of the Learner Variability Project | Twitter: @DigitalPromise Mary Curnock Cook, former CEO of UCAS & Chair of Emerge | Twitter: @MaryCurnockCook Alison Clark-Wilson, Principal Research Lead, UCL EDUCATE | Twitter: @AliClarkWilson  Lucía Figar, IE Chief of Corporate Innovation Chairwoman IE Rockets, IE University | Twitter: @luciafigar  Show Notes and References   Check out https://theedtechpodcast.com/edtechpodcast for the full show notes. Tell us your story We'd love to hear your thoughts. Record a quick free voicemail via speakpipe for inclusion in the next episode. Or you can post your thoughts or follow-on links via twitter @podcastedtech or via The Edtech Podcast Facebook page or Instagram.

This discussion is from the SHLOMOTION Archives and was originally recorded on the 4th of July 2019. It was one of many initial talks between engineers in the early days of constructing the Levi series trains. © 2019 S. E. Y. D. SHLOMOTION™ = reg. tm. Order voice overs, ghost writing poetry services and much more at https://www.fiverr.com/shlomoking. Follow us on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/StratosphericHeights/ and everywhere else online @shlomotion. Purchase SHLOMOTION™ merch at https://society6.com/shlomotion. Support our future poems, plays and short stories at https://www.patreon.com/SHLOMOTION. View all the best work from the SHLOMOTION™ Universe at https://shlomotion.org/highlights. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/shlomotion/message

This discussion is from the SHLOMOTION Archives and was originally recorded on the 4th of July 2019. It was one of many initial talks between engineers in the early days of constructing the Levi series trains. © 2019 S. E. Y. D. SHLOMOTION™ = reg. tm. Order voice overs, ghost writing poetry services and much more at https://www.fiverr.com/shlomoking. Follow us on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/StratosphericHeights/ and everywhere else online @shlomotion. Purchase SHLOMOTION™ merch at https://society6.com/shlomotion. Support our future poems, plays and short stories at https://www.patreon.com/SHLOMOTION. View all the best work from the SHLOMOTION™ Universe at https://shlomotion.org/highlights. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/shlomotion/message

In episode #10 Dr Bubacarr Bah of the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences in Cape Town (https://aims.ac.za/) shares with us his thoughts on compressive sampling and its relevance for the "Approximation, sampling and compression in data science" programme, details his role within AIMS and talks us through the important work the Institute does in providing opportunities and teaching to talented mathematicians from across the African continent.

In episode #10 Dr Bubacarr Bah of the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences in Cape Town (https://aims.ac.za/) shares with us his thoughts on compressive sampling and its relevance for the "Approximation, sampling and compression in data science" programme, details his role within AIMS and talks us through the important work the Institute does in providing opportunities and teaching to talented mathematicians from across the African continent.

What academic research do you think should be done with a focus on Africa? © 2019 S. E. Y. D. All rights reserved. SHLOMOTION™ = reg. tm. Order voice overs, ghost writing poetry services and much more at https://www.fiverr.com/shlomoking. Follow us on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/StratosphericHeights/ and everywhere else online @shlomotion. Purchase SHLOMOTION™ merch at https://society6.com/shlomotion. Support our future poems, plays and short stories at https://www.patreon.com/SHLOMOTION. View all the best work from the SHLOMOTION™ Universe at https://shlomotion.org/highlights. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/shlomotion/message

Today, Melanie brings you another great interview from her time at Deep Learning Indaba in South Africa. She was joined by Yabebal Fantaye and Jessica Phalafala for an in-depth look at the deep learning research that’s going on in the continent. At the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences, the aim is to gather together minds from all over Africa and the world to not only learn but to use their distinct perspectives to contribute to research that furthers the sciences. Our guests are both part of this initiative, using their specialized skills to expand the abilities of the group and stretch the boundaries of machine learning, mathematics, and other sciences. Yabebal elaborates on the importance of AIMS and Deep Learning Indaba, noting that the more people can connect with each other, the more confidence they will gain. Jessica points out how this research in Africa can do more than just advance science. By focusing on African problems and solutions, machine learning research can help increase the GDP and economic standards of a continent thought to be “behind”. Jessica Phalafala Jessica Phalafala is a PhD Applied Mathematics student at Stellenbosch University and currently affiliated with the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences. In her mid-twenties, she finds herself with four qualifications all obtained with distinction, including a Master of Science in Pure Mathematics degree from the University of the Witwatersrand. Jessica is interested in using her functional analysis background together with a number of newly developed skills to contribute towards developing rigorous mathematical theory to support some existing deep learning methods and algorithms for her PhD research. Outside of research she takes great interest in fast-tracking the level of accessibility of higher education in South Africa as co-founder of the Sego Sa Lesedi Foundation, a platform created to inform underprivileged high school learners of career and funding opportunities in science as well as provide them with mentorship as they transition into undergraduate studies. Yabebal Fantaye Dr. Fantaye is an AIMS-ARETE Research Chair based in South Africa. His research is in applying artificial intelligence and advanced statistical methods to cosmological data sets in order to understand the nature of the universe and to satellite images of the Earth in order to find alternative ways to monitor African development progress. Dr. Fantaye is a fellow of the World Economic Forum Young Scientists community, and a fellow and a Chair of the Next Einstein Forum Community of Scientists. Cool things of the week A Kubernetes FAQ for the C-suite blog BigQuery and surrogate keys: a practical approach blog Adding custom intelligence to Gmail with serverless on GCP blog Announcing Cloud Tasks, a task queue service for App Engine flex and second generation runtimes blog Unity and DeepMind partner to advance AI research blog Interview African Institute for Mathematical Sciences site Provable approximation properties for deep neural networks research Next Einstein Initiative site Square Kilometer Array (SKA) site University of the Witwatersrand site Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) site South African National Space Agency (SANSA) site National Astrophysics and Space Science Programme (NASSP)site IndabaX site Coursera site Andrej Karpathy research Andrej Karpathy Blog blog Question of the week If I’m using the Cluster Autoscaler for Kubernetes (or GKE), how can I prevent it from removing specific nodes from the cluster when scaling down? How can I prevent Cluster Autoscaler from scaling down a particular node? github What types of pods can prevent CA from removing a node? github Where can you find us next? Mark will definitely be at Kubecon in December and will probably be at Unite L.A. this month. Melanie is speaking at Monktoberfest Oct 4th in Portland, Maine and will be at CAMLIS the following week.

Samir Amin wrote in 2016 that: “Partial awareness emerges from particular struggles, for example, from the struggles of peasants or women for the defense of human commons or the struggle for respect of popular sovereignty. The progress of the convergence of these particular types of awareness would make it possible to advance towards the formulation of new ways to surpass capitalism. But note…increased awareness will not happen through successive adaptations to the requirements of capitalist accumulation, but through awareness of the necessity of breaking with those requirements. The most enlightened segments of the movement should not isolate themselves by brandishing their disdain for others. Rather, they should involve themselves in all struggles in order to help the others to advance their understanding.” According to John Bellamy Foster in his Monthly Review article titled, Samir Amin at 80: An Introduction and Tribute, Amin's work, as wide-ranging as it is, can be succinctly described in terms of the dual designation of the The Law of Value and Historical Materialism. For Amin, this basic division of Marxist theory is not to be denied. However, what makes Amin's work vital and innovative is his insistence that the economic laws of capitalism, summed up by the law of value, are subordinate to the laws of historical materialism. Economic science, while indispensable, cannot explain at the highest level of abstraction, as in mathematical equations, the full reality of capitalism and imperialism, since it cannot account either for the historical origins of the system itself, or for the nature of the class struggle. Nor indeed can it present in a strictly determinant fashion the contemporary historical manifestation of the law of value, expressed as the theory of “globalized value,” which requires recognition of such factors as monopoly power and unequal exchange. At best we can see value relations as historically “transformed” in ways that are less determinant than in the abstract models based on a freely competitive economy, but which are still subject to meaningful political-economic analysis. The rise of monopoly capital and imperialism from the late nineteenth century on consolidated a system of “apartheid on a world scale” dividing the affluent countries of the North from those of the South. Today, Africa World Now Project will present a 2013 lecture that Samir Amin gave at School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London as part of the series "Samir Amin: Six Decades of Development Debate" Samir Amin was born in Cairo in 1931 and was educated at the Lycee Francais there. He gained a Ph.D. in Political Economy in Paris (1957), as well as degrees from the Institut de Statistiques and from the Institut d'Etudes Politiques. He then returned home where he was attached to the planning bodies of Nasser's regime. He left Egypt in 1960 to work with the Ministry of Planning of the newly independent Mali (1960-1963), and following this, he commenced an academic career. He has held the position of full professor in France since 1966 and was for ten years (1970-1980) the director of the U.N. African Institute for Economic Development and Planning (in Dakar). Since 1980 he was directing the African Office of the Third World Forum, an international non-governmental association for research and debate. He is author of many books, which include, but are not limited to, Accumulation on a World Scale: A Critique of the Theory of Underdevelopment; Unequal Development: An Essay on the Social Formations of Peripheral Capitalism; Maldevelopment: Anatomy of a Global Failure; The People's Spring: The Future of the Arab Revolution

“In a couple of decades from now Africa is going to be the powerhouse of human capital globally—the youngest continent in terms of young demography.”Thierry Zomahoun. He's the President and CEO of the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences. He spoke with Scientific American Editor in Chief Mariette DiChristina, who recorded these comments, at the recent World Economic Forum in Davos.“Africa is…going to be the global hub for science discoveries in this century. How to make this happen is going to take three things in my view. Number one, we've got a massive view of untapped scientific talent, a wave of youngsters are coming. What we need to do is to provide these young people with the equal system within which they can flourish as great scientists and successful scientists. Equal system meaning training, give them the right training, give them research infrastructure for them to be able to come up as a great scientist.“So, second thing this is going to take is a conducive policy environment. Political leaders, industry leaders must join forces to come up with policies which are conducive for science in Africa.“And lastly, global collaboration around science. We need the American continent, the European continent, all continents, to join forces around Africa to collaborate effectively—researchers from the West and Africa to collaborate around some of the grand challenges which necessitate breakthrough research.”—Steve Mirsky[The above text is a transcript of this podcast.]

“In a couple of decades from now Africa is going to be the powerhouse of human capital globally—the youngest continent in terms of young demography.”Thierry Zomahoun. He's the President and CEO of the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences. He spoke with Scientific American Editor in Chief Mariette DiChristina, who recorded these comments, at the recent World Economic Forum in Davos.“Africa is…going to be the global hub for science discoveries in this century. How to make this happen is going to take three things in my view. Number one, we've got a massive view of untapped scientific talent, a wave of youngsters are coming. What we need to do is to provide these young people with the equal system within which they can flourish as great scientists and successful scientists. Equal system meaning training, give them the right training, give them research infrastructure for them to be able to come up as a great scientist.“So, second thing this is going to take is a conducive policy environment. Political leaders, industry leaders must join forces to come up with policies which are conducive for science in Africa.“And lastly, global collaboration around science. We need the American continent, the European continent, all continents, to join forces around Africa to collaborate effectively—researchers from the West and Africa to collaborate around some of the grand challenges which necessitate breakthrough research.”—Steve Mirsky[The above text is a transcript of this podcast.]

Thierry Zomahoun, president of the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences, talks about the potential and needs of science on the continent.

Thierry Zomahoun, president of the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences, talks about the potential and needs of science on the continent.

Mimi is the co-founder and Managing Director of Africommunications Group, a public relations and communications agency based in Johannesburg, South Africa. She is also the director of communications for the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS), a pan-African network of centres of excellence in mathematical sciences. In this episode, Mimi shares insight from her book "Talking to Africa" on how to effectively communicate to various African countries and some of the things to look out for when crafting a message for different African cultures. We also discuss the challenges on building a pan African Communications company.

Will Einstein’s successors be African? It’s very likely - and some of them will be women. Back in 2008 South African physicist Neil Turok gave a speech in which he declared his wish that the next Einstein would be from Africa. It was a rallying call for investment in maths and physics research in Africa. The ‘Next Einstein’ slogan became a mission for the organisation Neil Turok had founded to bring Africa into the global scientific community - through investment in maths and physics, the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences. That search for an African Einstein now has some results, with 15 ‘Next Einstein fellows’ and 54 ‘Next Einstein Ambassadors’. These are young African scientists, often leaders in their fields, working and studying in Africa. This programme visits the first ‘Next Einstein Forum’ – a meeting held in March 2016 in Senegal which celebrated the Next Einstein Fellows and also make the case for greater investment in scientific research in Africa. (Image: Rwandan President Paul Kagame answers a question during the NEF Global Gathering 2016 Presidential Panel, credit: NEF/Clément Tardif)

Dr. Mark G. Jackson earned his B.S. in Physics and Mathematics from Duke University and his Ph.D. in Theoretical Physics from Columbia University.  He has authored almost 40 technical papers during his ten years of research experience at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, the Lorentz Institute for Theoretical Physics, the Paris Centre for Cosmological Physics, the Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris, and the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences. His research in theoretical physics and cosmology has included brane gas cosmology, cosmic superstrings, and signatures of ultra high energy physics in the cosmic microwave background.  In 2008 he co-edited the NASA/Fermilab CMBPol Conference White Paper emphasizing the need for a polarization-dedicated satellite telescope. Realizing there was a shortage in scientific research funding, Dr. Jackson's expertise in physics and enthusiasm for conveying science to the general public led him to create a specialized crowdfunding platform called Fiat Physica, to facilitate public support of scientific advancement. During this episode, Nicole and Mark explore the importance of scientific advancement to our everyday lives, the key elements of an effective crowdfunding campaign, how to bridge the gap between the technical factors of your project and your marketing message, and some interesting examples from successful campaigns that focused in the area of scientific research and development. For learn more, donate, or launch your own crowdfunding campaign visit www.fiatphysica.com  

Neil Turok, founder of the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences, lectures on his school's achievements and the importance of nourishing math and science skills among Africa's youth.