JOHANNESBURG and ARMONK, N.Y., Aug. 25, 2016 /PRNewswire/
-- IBM Research (NYSE: IBM) today opened its second research
location on the African continent and announced several new project
collaborations in the areas of data driven healthcare, digital
urban ecosystems and astronomy.
IBM researchers in South Africa
with backgrounds in machine learning, mathematics, computer
science, robotics, genomics and computational biology, are
exploring the use of cognitive computing, the Internet of Things
and Big Data to support South
Africa's national priorities, drive skills development and
foster innovation-based economic growth.
"South Africa is a tremendous
growth and transformation story, yet its increasing population and
healthcare delivery shortfalls continue to pose challenges in the
country," said Solomon Assefa,
director, IBM Research – Africa.
"With the ability to detect patterns and discover new correlations,
cognitive and cloud computing and the Internet of Things can
provide potential solutions."
The lab's team of scientists is already collaborating
extensively with local universities, research institutions,
innovation centers, start-ups and government agencies. This will
help foster South Africa's
emerging technology ecosystem and develop and scale new
innovations.
As part of a 10-year investment program through South Africa's Department of Trade and
Industry and working closely with the Department of Science and
Technology, the new research lab is based at the University of the
Witwatersrand (Wits). The university was recently ranked amongst
the top 10 in emerging economies by the Times Higher Education
World University Rankings.
"The launch of the IBM Research laboratory is an exciting
milestone in the move towards a new era of globally competitive
research, innovation and entrepreneurship that will be emerging out
of the Tshimologong Precinct in Braamfontein. Wits is delighted to
be collaborating with IBM. We look forward to seeing top talent
congregate to address the continent's most intractable problems and
work on the world's next game changing technologies," said
Professor Adam Habib,
Vice-Chancellor and Principal of the University of the
Witwatersrand.
Aligned with areas of strategic national importance, the lab's
focus areas include:
Data Driven Healthcare
- In support of the World Health Organization's End TB
(Tuberculosis) Strategy, IBM scientists are designing wearable
sensor technology connected to the Watson Internet of Things to
trace the spread of highly infectious, communicable diseases. This
innovation will help healthcare organizations and health officials
develop prevention strategies and respond effectively.
- IBM scientists are developing cognitive learning approaches to
transform cancer reporting, prevention and precision medicine in
Africa. In a proof of concept
study, IBM scientists have discovered a basic molecular link
between cancer causing genes and those associated with metastasis,
the cause of 90% of cancer related deaths*. Preliminary results
from this work have been presented recently. Using anonymous,
unstructured data provided by the National Cancer Registry in
South Africa and in collaboration
with the University of Witwatersrand Medical School, the team is
developing cognitive algorithms to automate the inference of
national cancer statistics in South
Africa. This technology is expected to reduce a five-year
time lag in cancer statistics reporting to real-time.
- With the support of the City of
Johannesburg, IBM scientists have collected 65 samples of
microbes and bacteria from 19 bus stations across the city as part
of the global Metagenomics and Metadesign of the Subways and Urban
Biomes (MetaSUB) international consortium. Once the samples are
processed the results will be available to city planners, public
health officials and scientists who will use the data to help
officials predict and prepare for future disease outbreaks and
discover new species and biological systems.
- In early September, scientists from IBM, H3ABioNet and the
University of Notre Dame will host a
hackathon on anti-malarial drug resistance and drug combination
prediction.
Digital Urban Ecosystems
- Building on IBM's global Green Horizons initiative, researchers
at the new lab are working closely with experts from South Africa's
Council for Scientific and Industrial Research to analyze
historical and real-time data from environmental monitoring
stations. Using machine learning and cognitive models, the data
collected in the City of
Johannesburg, the City of Tshwane and the Vaal Industrial
Triangle will help provide more insight about air pollution and
model the effectiveness of intervention strategies. The project has
recently been extended to predict ground level ozone and air
quality forecasting.
- Commuters in the City of
Johannesburg currently spend 35 minutes extra travel time
per day due to traffic congestion, according to the TomTom Traffic
Index. Unreliable traffic light infrastructure provides challenges
to traffic light management in the city. Using real time anonymized
traffic data from TomTom combined with Twitter, IBM scientists have
developed a traffic optimization recommendation tool which can help
city officials dispatch traffic volunteers, known locally as
pointsmen, to the intersections where they are most urgently
needed.
- The City of Cape Town often
battles with devastating wild fires, due to its unique topography
and vegetation. Using data from The Weather Company, an IBM
business, and the City of Cape
Town's Open Data portal, IBM scientists have developed a
cognitive dashboard. This can assess fire incidence risk and
severity to help officials raise public awareness and prepare for
emergency response.
- The number of people living off-the-grid in Africa has grown by 114 million since 2000**.
To help meet the energy needs of communities who are living
remotely or would like to make use of renewable energy, IBM
scientists have developed a mobile app which uses analytics to
determine the solar requirements of users based on their energy
needs and location.
Exploring the Universe
- In 2018 the, Square Kilometer Array (SKA), the world's largest
radio telescope, will be built in South
Africa and Australia. IBM
scientists are collaborating with SKA South Africa (SKA-SA) on the
development of unsupervised algorithms which can make
groundbreaking astronomical discoveries. Scientists expect to
eventually apply the cognitive technology to other applications,
including the development of new pharmaceuticals and genomics. IBM
and SKA-SA have signed an agreement to explore the advancement of
this technology and to lead some major developments in data science
over the next decade.
- IBM scientists in South Africa
are joining NASA, the SETI Institute and Swinburne University to develop an Apache Spark
application to analyze the 168 million radio events detected over
the past 10 years by the Allen Telescope Array (ATA). The volume
and complexity of the data requires advanced machine learning
algorithms to separate noise from true signals of interest. These
requirements are well suited to the scalable in-memory capabilities
offered by Apache Spark when combined with the big data
capabilities of the IBM Cloud and IBM Bluemix Spark.
Open Infrastructure, Sustainable Design
The new lab features an Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS)
platform based on OpenStack connected to IBM Storwize for
efficiently provisioning 80TB of storage for research projects.
The lab is located in the Tshimologong Precinct in Braamfontein
– an inner-city area which is today re-emerging as a vibrant
Johannesburg district. The
two-level, 900 square meter lab has a DIY maker space with
electronic design equipment and a 3D printer.
Agile work spaces provide a collaborative environment for IBM
scientists to train and mentor Wits students and local start-ups.
Developer communities across Africa will also have access, at no charge, to
a LinuxONE Community
Cloud located in Johannesburg, which acts as a virtual R&D
engine for creating, testing and piloting emerging applications via
the cloud.
IBM Research Innovating for Africa
IBM has operated in Africa for
almost 100 years. Today, its operations span 24 countries,
including South Africa,
Morocco, Egypt, Nigeria, Ghana, Angola, Kenya
and Tanzania. IBM Research -
Africa is the first commercial research organization on the
continent, conducting applied and far-reaching exploratory research
into Africa's grand challenges and
committed to delivering commercially-viable innovations that impact
people's lives.
IBM's first African research lab was opened in Nairobi, Kenya in 2013. The South African
research facility supports IBM's Equity Equivalent Investment
Programme (EEIP). In recent years, IBM has also invested in the
development of an IBM Client Centre, an Innovation Centre, Service
Delivery Centre and a number of offices and data centers across
South Africa.
About IBM Research
For more than seven decades, IBM Research has defined the future
of information technology with more than 3,000 researchers in 12
labs located across six continents. Scientists from IBM Research
have produced six Nobel Laureates, 10 U.S. National Medals of
Technology, five U.S. National Medals of Science, six Turing
Awards, 19 inductees in the National Academy of Sciences and 20
inductees into the U.S. National Inventors Hall of Fame. For more
information about IBM Research, visit www.ibm.com/research.
Continue the conversation on Twitter @IBMResearch
#IBMResearchWITS.
Photos are available here:
https://www.flickr.com/gp/ibm_research_zurich/3j9Md4
*Weigelt, B., Peterse, J. L. & van 't Veer, L. J. Breast
cancer metastasis: markers and models. Nat. Rev.
Cancer 5, 591–602 (2005)
**Off-Grid Solar Market Trends Report 2016, published by
Bloomberg New Energy Finance and Lighting Global, an innovation of
the World Bank Group. In cooperation with Global Off-Grid Lighting
Association
Contacts:
|
|
Hulisani
Rasivhaga
|
Chris
Sciacca
|
IBM Media Relations
South Africa
|
Communications
Manager, IBM Research EMEA
|
+27 76 790
8175
|
+41 78 60 44
092
|
Hulisani@za.ibm.com
|
cia@zurich.ibm.com
|
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