Bio
Researcher and Entrepreneur
Chris Emezue is a seasoned researcher committed to developing intelligent systems that can learn even in low-resource scenarios, and are reliable. His research areas are natural language processing, causality, and reinforcement learning. As a dedicated contributor to the field of AfricaNLP, he has worked on several key projects to improve the representation of low-resource African language technologies and datasets. Furthermore, as an entrepreneur, Chris is building Lanfrica, a startup that aims to accelerate the development of AI applications in under-represented regions.
What I'm doing
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Research
I am committed to developing intelligent systems that can truly learn, even in low-resource scenarios, and are adaptable. My research areas cut across natural language processing, causality, and reinforcement learning. Learn more about my research here
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Lanfrica
I am building Lanfrica, a startup that aims to accelerate the development of AI applications in African and under-represented regions, by creating large, high-quality African machine learning datasets and building a data-centric foundational platform to assist enterprises in accelerating their AI applications.
Stuff I've been up to
2023
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Deep Learning Indaba 2023
Serving as a Reviewer
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ICML 2023 Workshop on Structured Probabilistic Inference & Generative Modeling
Serving as a Reviewer
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Development of the Nigerian National Artificial Intelligence Policy (NAIP)
Volunteer Expert
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KLS Talk webinar hosted by Kabod Group's Language Department
Invited Speaker
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Intron AfriSpeech-200 Automatic Speech Recognition Challenge
Partner Organizer | LanfricaThe objective of this challenge is to create an automatic speech recognition model for clinical speech-to-text, using an accented English speech corpus of 200 hours, featuring 120 different African accents. Learn more
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Co-organizer: 3rd Workshop on Multilingual Representation Learning, collocated with EMNLP 2023
Workshop Co-organizerHelping to make the MRL 2023 a huge success. Learn more
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The 61st Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL) 2023.
Serving on the Program Committe as a Reviewer
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Bambara-French Machine Translation Competition
Overall WinnerLeader of the team `AlphaTeam` participating in the Bambara-French MT competition. Learn more
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Building language technologies for our under-represented languages
Co-organizerThis webinar intends to discuss the question of how we can build language technologies for our minority/indigenous/endangered languages and dialects. Language is an important part of culture and so how do we ensure that artificial intelligence represents the culture of everyone in the world and not just the majority ?
2022
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Montreal AI & Neuroscience Conference
Invited speaker | Panel discussion on Future of Neuro-AI through the lens of early career researchers
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Deep Learning Indaba: A View on Diversity in AI
Article contribution
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AI and African Languages: Empowering Cultures and Communities
Article contribution
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Invited Speaker: the 2022 Deep Learning Indaba
Invited Speaker
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Invited Speaker: the 2022 Deep Learning Indaba
Invited Speaker
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The GovTech Summit 2022
LanfricaAttended the in-person GovTech Summit at The Hague, Netherlands. Represented Lanfrica and talked with many stakeholders. Had fun moments too 😊.
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Hackathon HACK|BAY 2022
Overall Winner2-day on-site hackathon. Led my team - PerfectMatch - to victory through the design of an AI-enabled recommender system that uses only the text from website (no need for cookies).
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GSK.ai GeneDisco Challenge
Winner in all tasks (Team: PYCD)The GeneDisco challenge is a machine learning community challenge for evaluating batch active learning algorithms for exploring the vast experimental design space in genetic perturbation experiments. Genetic perturbation experiments, using for example CRISPR technologies to perturb the genome, are a vital component of early-stage drug discovery, including target discovery and target validation. The GeneDisco challenge is organized in conjunction with the Machine Learning for Drug Discovery workshop at ICLR-22.
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Deep Learning IndabaX Sudan
Invited speakerGave a talk on causality titled: A Gentle Introduction to Causal Machine Learning.
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Lanfrica Crosses Milestone of 1000 African AI Resources🎉
Article contribution
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Annual Student Symposium: Mind your language
Invited SpeakerGave a talk titled: Masakhane – pioneering participatory approaches to African languages processing. Learn more
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Lanfrica – the hub for African language resources – A conversation with Chris Emezue
Invited Speaker | Media
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A Guided Tour through the Transformers Landscape
Guest Lecture
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African Digits Recording Sprint w/Hugging Face
Event Organizer (while working at Hugging Face)Organized this sprint in order to create a spoken digits dataset for African languages.
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6th edition of the Multilingualism Week Conference
Invited SpeakerThis is a one-of-a-kind event that brings together language enthusiasts, students, and professionals to network and discuss relevant language industry subjects.
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How to train your model dynamically using adversarial data
Article contribution (while working at Hugging Face)
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Global South in AI @NEURIPS 2022
Served on the Program Committe as a Reviewer
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ICML 2022 Hybrid Social on "Building NLP in Africa"
Invited Speaker | Panelist
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African Carpentries Community Meetup
Invited Speaker | Lanfrica
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New voices in AI: machine learning, causality, and founding Lanfrica with Chris Emezue
Invited Speaker | InterviewWelcome to episode 7 of New voices in AI. Here, Chris Emezue shares his journey into AI, his work in machine learning, causality, and founding Lanfrica. Learn more
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Mbaza NLP Community Kickoff Event
Invited Speaker
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TUM ENTREPRENEURSHIP DAY
Exhibition of LanfricaEvery year at the end of June, the TU Munich and the UnternehemerTUM celebrate the start-up activities at TUM as part of the Entrepreneurship Day. On this day, the entire ecosystem of students, scientists, alumni, corporate partners, and start-ups come together to network and exchange ideas about start-ups and innovation at TUM and UTUM. Learn more
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ActuIA Quaterly Magazine
Featured | Lanfrica
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We Ain’t Just Cooking Jollof Rice, We Are Building AfricaNLP
Article contribution by Shode Iyanuoluwa | Lanfrica
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Introduction to NLP and its applications in the African context
Invited Speaker
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Igbo Language and New Technologies
Event Organizer | Igwebuike CommunityOrganized to incentivize the Igbo speaking community to record voices on the Common Voice platform for Igbo language. Learn more Learn more about Igwebuike community
2021
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3rd Nepal Winter School in AI
Invited Speaker
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UCREL Corpus Research Seminar
Invited Speaker
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African Art with ML
Invited Speaker (with the family 😊)
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Masakhane x BigScience: Resource Cataloguing Event
Co-organizer
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Hack ur Culture: Lekgotla
Invited Speaker