IBM Research Africa : the world is our lab
Since 1945, IBM Research has defined the future of information technology with more than 3 000 researchers in 12 labs located across the world. Scientists from IBM Research have produced 6 Nobel Laureates, 10 U.S. National Medals of Technology, 5 U.S. National Medals of Science, 6 Turing Award, 19 inductees in the National Academy of Sciences and 20 inductees into the U.S. National Inventors Hall of fame. In Africa, IBM Research has labs in Nairobi, Kenya, and Johannesburg, South Africa, which are the first on the continent for conducting applied and exporatory research into Africa's grand challenges. The lab in South Africa has two main research groups, Advanced and Applied Artificial Intelligence, and Data-Driven Healthcare.
The Advanced and Applied Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) team focuses on making scientific contributions to AI algorithms, and applying AI to address real-world problems. Our current research topics cover the areas of computer vision, natural language processing, sequence modelling, semi-supervised learning, and explainability. We explore techniques such as generative adversarial networks (GANs), convolutional neural networks (CNNs) and recurrent neural networks (RNNs). Outputs of our work incude research papers, proof of concepts and patents.
The Data-Driven Healthcare team is developing computational platforms for mining heterogeneous biological and medical data to change the way we prevent, diagnose, treat and manage disease. The research in this team is currently focused on two disease areas: Tuberculosis + HIV and cancer, where we apply methods and models from fields such as natural language understanding, image understanding and bioinformatics. The impact of our research is demonstrated by the invitation of our team members to present their work at world-class scientific meetings and coverage of our work in both local and international media.
For more information visit: http://research.ibm.com/labs/africa/
We're Hiring! - Join us and do your best work ever.
Research scientist
Required
- At least a master's degree in computer science, computer engineering, statistics or related fields
- Excellent software development and coding ability in Python, R, C++, Java, MATLAB or related languages
- A solide understanding of the principles of AI and machine learning and the ability to apply them in various fields
Experience
- Strong publication record in top-tier international journals and conference proceedings
- Experience with deep learning frameworks and libraries e.g. TensorFlow, Torch, Caffe, etc.
Research Engineer
Required
- Knowledge of software design patterns and principles
- Understand data modelling, business logic, API layers
- Ability to create user interfaces
- Experience with HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Python, SQL and Java
Experience
- At least 3 years programming experience
- Cloud native application platforms
- Unix-like environments, shell scripting, version control
- Single board computers and microcontrollers e.g. Raspberry Pi, Arduino, etc.
- Building web and mobile applications
Internships
With the IBM research Africa internship initiative, we are reaching out to outstanding young research talent from designated groups as defined in the Employment Equity Act of South Africa. We invite master's and PhD students to apply for a 6 month or 1 year internship position at the research lab. Candidates will work together with the full-time researchers on current projects, and will gain hands on experience with building and deploying AI models on the huge IBM GPU powered clusters.
To apply, send an email with your CV to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Download the complete IBM leaflet here.