Ismaila SECK, Ph.D

Ismaila Seck, PhD

email: ismaila.seck.mlearning@gmail.com

Recent activities

• Aside from my research on Automatic Speech Recognition, I launched a reading group to gather members of GalsenAI that are interested in the research part of Deep Learning model, and offer researchers a space to communicate and discuss around subjects that interest them . GalsenAI is in my opinion the most active AI Association in Senegal. You can find a video of our first session here.

My year 2025

My year 2024

2024 was one of my busiest years. Aside from my Lengo AI adventure, and my activities at GalsenAI, we launched AI Hub Senegal, an initiative that is federating the actors of the Senegalese Artificial Intelligence ecosystem. A very important in our shared journey to democratize Artificial Intelligence. Here is a sample of my activities during 2024:

• Lengo AI was feature in Jeune Afrique as one of the 20 Future Champions of Tech: https://lnkd.in/eXXtRzTB.

• Co-authored a paper published in Transaction on Machine Learning Research (TMLR) with Eugene Ndiaye and Matthew Lau: https://lnkd.in/eyWseE8h.

• Attended NeurIPS again, 7 years after my first attendance, and got the chance to connect in-person with Jonas NGNAWE, Awa Dieng, and Marieme NGOM to name a few. The Black in AI workshop was an opportunity to strengthen the connection to actors of some other African countries AI ecosystem.

• Attended the Deep Learning Indaba for the 2nd time in a row. This edition was special since it was the time that Senegal hosted that event. I got the opportunities to be a panelist in two different panels. I was a keynote speaker and/or panelist at the IndabaX Senegal, IndabaX Congo 🇨🇬 and at IndabaX Chad (by Chad AI Network).

• Was a speaker at the AMLD Africa in Nairobi Kenya.

• Organized a Machine Learning Study Jam, a month long program to learn/revisiting the fundamentals of Machine Learning, and run it with Rokhaya Diagne and Aïmérou Ndiaye. We manage to get 30% of women of the registration with the help of WiMLDS Dakar.

• Aïmérou Ndiaye and I also run an in-person training on the “Fundamentals of Deep Learning” and manage to get 50+ participants to be certified from NVIDIA on a single Saturday . I reached the Silver Tier of the Certified Instructor as I run in total 3 workshop (online and in-person) and manage to get 90+ participants certified.

• Spent more than 100 hours teaching and supervising AI project at Ecole Superieure Multinationale des Telecommunications (ESMT Dakar) and Université numérique Cheikh Hamidou KANE (UN-CHK).

• Made an appearance at Edtech Mondays on TV5 to talk about at the initiatives the AI Hub Senegal to promote the AI Ecosystem.

My year 2023

2023 was a special year for me. Two entities greatly participated in that Lengo AI and GalsenAI. I joined the admin board of GalsenAI with the ambition to gather people sharing passion about AI and research paper around AI. I also happened to state that there should be a before 2023 and an after 2023 for GalsenAI, so far so good. I joined LengoAI as CTO and Co-founder and participated in a successful pre-seed fundraising where we raised 1 million+$.

This year, I renewed with attending gatherings where AI was discussed as participant, panelist and teaching. In all cases, I did learn and did enjoy that. I attended the #DLRL Summer School in Montreal, the AfricArena AI Summit in Tunis, the Deep Learning Indaba and the Google for Startups graduation in Accra. I met wonderful people during those events, some I knew only virtually prior to those events.

The things I am the most proud are:

1- Trying to be the best collaborator with all my collaborators.

2- Participating in the making of the hashtag#SNAI the Senegalese National Artificial Intelligence Strategy.

3- Serving the GalsenAI community especially allowing them to get the NVIDIA Fundamentals of Deep Learning certification in my quality of Nvidia Deep Learning Institute Certified Instructor.

My year 2022

As a lecturer/researcher:

• I joined African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS) and the African Master of Machine Intelligence as Post-doctoral Researcher.

• I gave a lecture on Image Processing and Computer Vision at Université virtuelle du Sénégal (UVS).

• I was a speaker at the IndabaX Senegal where I talked about adversarial examples.

As an ML/DL enthusiast who enjoys interacting with other enthusiasts:

• I participated to the Kaggle Days , my first in-person since the pre-covid era. The learning experience was amazing, plus I had the opportunity to attend talks from and speak with some Kaggle Grand Masters.

• I also served as a mentor for the ML Study Jam organized by GalsenAI to help people learn more about Machine Learning/Deep Learning.

• I have been granted NVIDIA Deep Learning Institute Ambassadorship, that is a great step for my goal of making Deep Learning accessible to more people.

• I contributed to the translation of the Hugging Face course from English to French. My first contribution to open-source project, the first of many more I hope.

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Work Experience

Post-Doctoral Researcher

AIMS-AMMI (African Institute for Mathematical Sciences-African Master of Machine Intelligence)
2022-Now

Teaching

• Image Processing and Computer Vision, Senegalese Virtual University, 2021-2022
• Supervised Learning, Senegalese Virtual University (UVS), 2019-2021
• (Random) Signal Processing, INSA de Rouen, 2019-2020
• Numerical Analysis, INSA de Rouen, 2018-2019
• Remedial Courses in Mathematics, INSA de Rouen, 2018-2019
• Machine Learning, Polytech Clermont-Ferrand, 2017-2018
• Probability and Statistics, Polytech Clermont-Ferrand, 2017-2018

Publications

• Seck, Ismaïla, Gaëlle Loosli and Stéphane Canu. “Linear Program Powered Attack”, IJCNN-International Joint Conference on Neural Networks, 2021.

• Seck, Ismaïla, Gaëlle Loosli, and Stephane Canu. “L1-norm double backpropagation adversarial defense.” ESANN-European Symposium on Artificial Neural Networks, Computational Intelligence and Machine Learning, 2019.

Education

PhD in Computer Science

INSA Rouen Normandie; 2017-2021; Rouen, Normandy, France

Maths and Modeling Engineering

Polytech Clermont-Ferrand; 2014-2017; Clermont-Ferrand, Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, France

Research Master’s Degree in Computer Science

University Clermont-Auvergne (UCA); 2016-2017; Clermont-Ferrand, Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, France

Preparatory Classes for the Grandes Ecoles

CPC ESMT-ESIGELEC; 2012-2014; Dakar, Senegal