Denish Azamuke, Google Ph.D. felow at the Department of Computer Science, Makerere University
Denish Azamuke is a Google Ph.D. fellow at the Department of Computer Science, Makerere University. His graduate research focuses on privacy-preserving synthetic data generation for financial crime machine-learning (financial analytics) endeavors. His research interest include synthetic data generation, privacy-enhancing technologies (PETs), machine learning, and artificial intelligence for social good.
Kayode Olayele, PostDoctoral Fellow at Data Science for Social Impact Lab, University of Pretoria
Kayode Olaleye is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Pretoria in South Africa, affiliated with the Data Science for Social Impact Lab. His research explores approaches for processing and generating code-switched and code-mixed data in African languages. He obtained his PhD from the University of Stellenbosch in South Africa.
Riche-Mike Wellington, Chief Programme Specialist at the Ghana Commission for UNESCO
Riche-Mike brings over 20 years of expertise in education, science policy, and cultural heritage management. He has been pivotal in launching UNESCO Centers of Excellence in STEM and education policy and played key role in Accra's designation as UNESCO World Book Capital 2023. Riche-Mike has also spearheaded international science education initiatives across Africa, including the International Year of Light and the UN's 2025 International Year of Quantum Science and Technology. A key member of Ghana's delegation to UNESCO since 2005, he has contributed to major international efforts like the SDG 4 Framework for Action in Africa. His academic background spans education, environmental management, and international law.
Charese Smiley, AI Research Executive Director, J.P. Morgan AI Research
Charese is an AI Research Executive Director, at J.P. Morgan AI Research. Her research interests center around natural language processing and computational linguistics. Prior to joining J.P. Morgan, Charese worked on the Vision & Language Technology team at Capital One and at Thomson Reuters, with the Research & Development group. Charese holds two patents for her research and is a winner of Turing tests for creative arts, claiming 1st prize in Dartmouth’s 2017 PoetiX competition for machine-generated sonnet most indistinguishable from human poetry. She also won the 2018 LimeriX competition for machine-generated limericks. Charese has a B.S. in Computer Science from Texas A&M University and a Ph.D. in Computational Linguistics from Indiana University.
Samuel Assefa, Head of AI, U.S. Bank
Samuel is Head of AI and Applied R&D Innovation at U.S. Bank leading Innovation on the use of AI to transform financial services. He was previously an executive director of AI Research at J.P. Morgan. Prior to joining J.P. Morgan, Samuel worked as a Vice President of AI/ML & Data Science at Barclays, a Research Fellow in population genomics/bioinformatics at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and as a computational biologist at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute. Samuel is an honorary professor of Artificial Intelligence at Jimma University and an associate staff member of CDT-Africa at Addis Ababa University in Ethiopia. He has an MSc in Information Systems from De Montfort University and an M.Phil and PhD in Bioinformatics from the University of Cambridge in the UK.
Toyin Aguda, Senior AI Research Lead, J.P. Morgan AI Research
Toyin is a Senior AI Research Lead at J.P. Morgan AI Research with focus on using AI to benefit the finance industry and beyond through generative AI, prompt engineering on LLMs, synthetic data generation and other NLP-related projects. She led ICAIF’22 workshop and co-led ICAIF’21 workshop. Prior to joining J.P. Morgan, Toyin worked as a Data Scientist III with Caterpillar, a subject matter expert on the clients’ data platform for aftermarket solutions, and also with Nielsen TV Rating as a Data scientist. Toyin is an Executive MBA candidate at The University of Chicago Booth school of Business. She holds a master’s degree in Applied Economics from the University of Illinois at Chicago and another in Applied Probability and Statistics from Northern Illinois University.