About Me

Loyani is a PhD student in Computer Science and Informatics at Emory University. Recently, he worked as a Research Intern at Google Research with the AI weather team and as an Assistant Lecturer in the Faculty of Science and Technology at Mzumbe University. Prior to joining Mzumbe University, he was an Assistant Lecturer in the School of Computational and Communication Science and Engineering (CoCSE) at the Nelson Mandela African Institution of Science and Technology (NM-AIST) and an Assistant Lecturer of Computer Science in the Department of Natural Sciences and Information Technology at Mwenge Catholic University. He received his Master’s and Bachelor’s degrees from NM-AIST and Mzumbe University respectively. He has a keen research interest in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, particularly in the field of Computer Vision. Loyani is highly motivated and passionate about research focused on developing Computer Vision methods to address real-world challenges. His most recent research involved developing a deep learning model for the early detection, segmentation, and quantification of Tuta absoluta, a pest which is a major threat to tomato productivity globally. This work has been presented at several renowned AI/ML conferences and workshops including Black in AI/ NeurIPS 2019 & 2023, ICLR 2020, DSA 2020 & 2023, MD4SG 2020 and Deep Learning Indaba 2023, and awarded an Honorable Mention at the Weakly Supervised Computer Vision 2023 workshop and a Best Poster prize at the Deep Learning Indaba 2024.