Name : Dr Michael Zimba
Email : Mail@must.acc
Position : Director, MIT
Dr Michael Zimba is the Director of the Malawi Institute of Technology (MIT). Prior to joining MUST, Dr Zimba was the Acting Director of the Directorate of ICT (2022-2023); an Associate Professor of Artificial Intelligence, Wireless (Mobile) Communication, High Performance Computing and (Big Data) Data Science (2013-2022) in the Department of ICT and founding Dean of the Faculty of Science, Technology and Innovation (2018-2021) of Mzuzu University.
He is engaged by the Academic Council of the African Centre of Excellence in Internet of Things (ACEIoT) of the College of Science and Technology, University of Rwanda, as an external consultant/examiner of PhD theses in Internet of Things and is also engaged by African Union Development Agency-New Partnership for Africa’s Development (AUDA-NEPAD) as a Contributing Expert on Artificial Intelligence. Dr Zimba was an Expert Country Delegate to UNESCO Southern Africa Sub-Regional Forum on Artificial Intelligence (SARFAI) in Namibia, 2022; was in the Country Team of Experts that represented Malawi in the African Union 4th ordinary session of the Specialized Technical Committee meeting on Education, Science, and Technology (STC-EST 4, September 2022), and contributes to SADC Cyber-Infrastructure Framework on High Performance Computing (HPC).
Dr Zimba was also in the Malawi Country Team of Experts that successfully negotiated the first HPC facility for Malawi from SADC and is a founding member of the UNDP-led Malawi National Innovation Coordinating Team, charged with Science, Technology and Innovation harnessing at national stage. A seasoned academic and higher education institution administrator, he is also a National Council of Higher Education-engaged ICT-Systems and ICT-education quality assurance expert/consultant; an enthusiastic ICT (former Mzuzu University ICT Committee Chair) practitioner with necessary drive and determination needed to resolve complex ICT related challenges, Dr Zimba possesses effective organizational skills and excellent working knowledge of various technologies and is committed to keep up to date with the latest developments.
He holds a Doctor of Engineering (DEng~PhD] in Computer Science and Technology (Artificial Intelligence), a distinction MSc in Information Theory, Coding and Cryptography (Information Security), and a distinction BSc in Electrical (and Electronics) Engineering. He boasts of an active profile of projects, scholarly works and publications, awards and recognitions. Alongside other renowned experts, Dr Zimba co-authored the African Union Technical Report on Artificial Intelligence titled “AI for African: Harnessing Artificial Intelligence for Africa’s socio-economic development” and is also a member of the AU-AI-Strategy Team, currently charged with developing the African Union Continental Strategy on Artificial Intelligence. He also reviewed the book on 4IR titled “The Disruptive Fourth Industrial Revolution: Technology, Society and Beyond” published by Springer (2020). His work has been developed into patents (e.g Patent CN102184537B: Image region tamper detection method based on wavelet transform and principal component analysis, China, 2013).
Furthermore, Dr Zimba enjoys high impact citation rate. Among several technical and scientific papers and theses from all continents of the world that cite Dr Zimba’s work are the following books, all published by Springer: Advances in Electrical and Computer Technologies (2021); Proceedings of International Conference on Advanced Computing Applications (2021); Intelligent Systems Technologies and Applications (2020); Recent trends in Communication, Computing and Electronics (2018); Advances in Electronics, Communication and Computing (2016); Cloud Computing and Security (2016); Advances in Computer Science, Engineering and Applications (2012); Applied Computer Vision and Image Processing (2020), Evolving BCI Therapy, Engaging Brain State Dynamics (2018); Handbook of Multimedia Information Security, Techniques and Applications (2019); and Proceedings of Third International Conference on Intelligent Computing, Information and Control Systems (2022). Notable grants/projects include Africa Development Bank (ICT) Job for Youth Project (US$269,000.00); Association for Computing Machinery (ACM’s) Special Interest Group on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (SIGKDD) Grant (US$40,000.00) for International Machine Learning, Data Science and Python Summer School; and United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Covid-19 Response 2020 (US$15,925.00); ICTAM 2020 Best Artificial Intelligence Innovation Award for developing Smart Two-tier Copyright-Violation Detection System; UNDP MiLab Grant for developing Virtual Lab eduSystem (US$22,000.00); UNDP Covid-19 Response 2021 (US$18,000.00); and UNDP competitive core resource fund for Transforming Public Universities across Africa into spaces for innovation, experimentation, and accelerated learning, piloting MUBAS Design Studio (US$1,500,000).
Dr Zimba’s consultancy, research and teaching interests include: (Big Data) Data Science, [(B)DS]; AI and its nested subfields of Machine Learning (ML), and Deep learning (DL,); (B)DS/AI/ML/DL application in various sectors such as 5G/B5G Mobile and Wireless Communication Networks, Agriculture, Energy, Education and Health; Intelligent and Smart Systems; High Performance Computing and High Throughput Computing Systems (HPC & HTC); Emerging Technologies (Blockchain, Drone, Internet of Things), their Impact and Enabling Policies; Digital (Multimedia) Signal Processing, Analysis and Forensics; System Automation, Modeling and Simulation; Watermarking, Steganography and Cryptology.