Speakers – WACREN

Posted on March 18, 2021 by wacren2020

Dr Tshiamo Motshegwa

Dr Tshiamo Motshegwa is an academic based at the Department of Computer Science, Faculty of Science at the University of Botswana where he is a lecturer and leads the High-Performance Computing and Data Science Research cluster and the University-Industry-Government cocreation Platform. He received a BEng 1:1 (Hons) in Computer Systems Engineering and a Ph.D. in Computer Science- both at the School of Mathematics, Computer Science and Engineering, City,University Of London, UK.

He has had visiting fellowships at British Telecom Research & Innovation Labs (BTexact Technologies) at Intelligent Business Systems Group, Adastral Park Ipswich, UK and fellowships at the UNESCO International Center For Theoretical Physics (ICTP), Trieste Italy and internship at British Energy Plc, Lancashire, UK.

Dr Motshegwa serves on the Botswana Government’s Ministry of Tertiary Education, Science and Technology (MOTE) task team for the Botswana Space Science strategy overarching developments and opportunities in space sciences and technologies. He serves to engage at the Ministry regarding the National Digital Transformation Initiative for research, science , technology innovation ecosystems through cyberinfrastructure for digital revolution, capacity building and digital skills.

Dr Motshegwa is a member of the Botswana Square Kilometre Array & African Very Long Base Interferometer Network (AVN) Projects technical Committee, the Botswana Open Data Open Science (ODOS) committee and the Botswana-South Africa Joint Commission on Research, Science, Technology and Innovation.

Regionally, he has been Chair of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) Technical Experts Working Group developing and implementing the SADC Regional Cyber-infrastructure Framework – this to develop a shared regional commons of compute, data, networks and human capital to enhance regional research, innovation and education and host data and computationally intensive projects of regional impact. In SADC he also engages in the SADC ICT Thematic group

Dr Motshegwa engages in Global, Regional, National and Institutional innovation ecosystems development and linkages – to this end he participates in the SADC Intellectual Property Rights initiative; has engaged in Southern African Innovation Support Programme (SAIS) where he lead projects on Developing the National Technology Transfer Office and the University, Industry, Government Cocreation Platform – these for technology transfer and provision of intellectual property services in Botswana; strengthening innovation ecosystems through stakeholders interplay, technology up-skilling, technology development in partnership with SADC regional and global partners such as South Africa and Finland.

Dr Motshegwa also engages Botswana Qualifications Authority on qualifications and institutional accreditations and The Human Resource Development Council on skills development, research and Innovation interventions programmes.

He serves in international steering committees of the International Data Week Conference (IDW2018), Scientific Data Conference (ScidataCon 2018) and International Conference on Internet, Cybersecurity and Information Systems (ICICIS2016, ICICIS2018), IST-Africa 2018, IST-Africa 2019 IST-Africa 2020, VizAfrica 2019 – Data Visualisation and HELINA 2019 – Health Informatics in Africa

Posted on March 17, 2021 by wacren2020

Erik-Jan Bos

Erik-Jan Bos works at NORDUnet, the Nordic regional R&E Network serving the NRENs in Norway, Finland, Sweden, Denmark, and Iceland. His role at NORDUnet is “Policy & Strategy Officer”. NORDUnet A/S is headquartered in Kastrup, Denmark.

Next to his role as co-Secretary of the Global R&E Network CEO Forum, Erik-Jan’s responsibilities include co-chairing the GNA-G (Global Network Advancement Group), working on defining the next architecture for the worldwide interconnect for Research and Education. This has already has led to successful implementations such as the ANA (Advanced North Atlantic) Collaboration, running at 1,000 Gbit/s (yes, that is 1 Tbit/s) together with partners in Europe and North America, and AER (Asia-pacific Europe Ring) running at 200 Gbit/s between Asia (Japan and Singapore) and Europe (Amsterdam and London). Both ANA and AER are referred to as elements of the GREN, the Global R&E Network.

Erik-Jan is passionate about submarine cable systems, and has the strong opinion that Europe needs to ensure that it determines its own digital future. European Digital Sovereignty is not just a nice term, it should be a goal to actively pursue. No-one has characterized this better than Mr. Filipe Baptista (REPER Portugal) by saying “Europe cannot become an island in the Digital Ocean”. Arctic Connect, a project to build the world’s first submarine cable system through the Arctic Ocean, between Norway/Finland and Japan, led by Finnish company Cinia Oy, is an excellent example on how to move forward on European Digital Sovereignty.

Posted on March 17, 2021March 17, 2021 by wacren2020

Prof. Ousmane Moussa Tessa

Ousmane Moussa TESSA is an Associate Professor of mathematics at the Faculty of Sciences and Technology of University Abdou Moumouni, Niger. He holds a Ph.D in mathematics from University of Rennes (France) and another in Educational Sciences from the University of Montreal (Canada). His researches focus on computer algebra, mathematical epidemiology and integration of ICT in education, specially developing support towards learning mathematics.

For over a decade, he has played an important role in the development and the promotion of Research and Education Networks in his country, and West and Central Africa too. Currently, he is a member of the Board of Directors of WACREN (West and Central Africa Research and Education Network) and the CEO of Niger-REN. He was the former Director of Scientific Research at the Ministry of Higher Education and Research of Niger and he was also an associate member of Abdus Salam ICTP Center de Trieste from 1994 to 1998.

Posted on March 12, 2021March 12, 2021 by wacren2020

Dr Boubakar Barry

Boubakar Barry holds Master’s degree in Nuclear Physics and PhD in Nuclear Electronics, all obtained at the Technical University of Dresden in Germany.

After his studies, Boubakar joined Université Cheikh Anta Diop de Dakar (UCAD) in 1989 as a lecturer and researcher, where he taught Physics, Electronics and Computer Networks.

He was the Director of the Computer Center of UCAD for eight years. During this period, he set up the first Cisco Regional Academy in Francophone Africa, to train specialists in network technologies.

In 2006, he joined the Association of African Universities (AAU) based in Accra as Coordinator of the Research and Education Networking Unit (RENU). During his seven years at AAU, Boubakar facilitated the creation of national research and education networks in Africa, particularly in West and Central Africa.

Dr Barry is currently the Director General of WACREN, the West and Central African Research and Education Network.

Posted on March 11, 2021March 13, 2021 by wacren2020

Francesca Di Mauro

Francesca Di Mauro is the Head of Unit for European Commission’s International Partnerships (INTPA. A3) West Africa. This Italian national is a senior European Commission official with nearly 20 years of experience in development policy and practice, including in the field (EU offices in Zambia and Mozambique), where she covered various sectors and cross-cutting themes (economic programmes/Budget Support, governance, social sectors, agriculture, regional integration).

After heading the Central Africa Unit for nearly five years, in January 2021 she has moved to lead the Western Africa Unit.

She holds a PhD in Economics and is fluent in English, French and Portuguese.

Posted on March 11, 2021March 12, 2021 by wacren2020

Alain Aina

Alain Aina is the Chief Technology Officer (CTO). He has been in this position since 2018. Alain and his colleagues in the Network Operation Centre (NOC) administer, maintain and upgrade the WACREN network. Before this role, Alain was the Senior Network Engineer (SNE) from 2016 to 2018.

Alain won the coveted Jonathan B. Postel Award in 2021, for his leadership in building technical communities which have helped countless people to spread the Internet across Africa and the world.

Alain built the first bulletin board systems (BBS) in Benin while working for a company that focused on computing and internetworking. He also launched the first full IP services in the Togolese Republic and then in other countries in West Africa.

He is one of the founders of African Network Information Centre (AFRINIC), where he’s served in several roles, including acting Chief Technology Officer, acting Chief Executive Officer, and Director of Research and Innovation and Special Projects Manager. Alain was one of the founding members of Africa Network Operators Group (AfNOG) and served for 10 years before finally retiring. He was a Trustee of Internet Society (ISOC) from 2011 to 2014. Aina is a key technical resource for the DNS community, including Africa Top Level Domains Organization(AFTLD).

Alain has a degree in electrical engineering and in the maintenance and analysis of computer systems.

Posted on March 11, 2021March 12, 2021 by wacren2020

Kevin Chege

Kevin Chege joined the Internet Society in 2012 as the Internet Development Manager for Africa under the Africa Regional Bureau. Currently, he is the Director, Internet Development.

Kevin has more than 17 years experience in the tech space, starting at the KENET (the Kenya Education Network Trust) where he served as the Network Manager responsible for IP network design, training, Network Operations and Network Services including managing DNS Services, e-mail, and web hosting on open source platforms.

Kevin is engaged in several projects at ISOC related to technical capacity building, building communities of practice, Internet measurements and open Internet standards. He helps design technical online teaching content, courses and online labs used to train engineers in several languages. He also helps out as an instructor at various NOGs and NRENs in Africa and has also helped to get several NOGs and tech forums in Africa started. Kevin holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Information Systems from USIU-Africa (Kenya), an online certificate on “Learning to Teach Online”, and a Master’s Degree in Information Security from the Lulea University of Technology (Sweden).

He is based in Nairobi, Kenya.

Posted on March 11, 2021March 12, 2021 by wacren2020

Amreesh Phokeer

Amreesh Phokeer is a Research Manager, currently leading data analytics and research projects at AFRINIC.

His focus areas are Interdomain routing, network security, Internet measurements, content delivery and QoE, with a particular emphasis on African networks.

He is also a frequent speaker on topics relating to DNSSEC, RPKI, Internet Routing Registry (IRR) usage and Internet measurements. Previously, as a Software Engineering Manager, he was responsible of AFRINIC application portfolio including RPKI, DNSSEC, WHOIS and MyAFRINIC.

Between 2008 and 2010, Amreesh worked as a Guest Researcher at NIST in the Information Discovery, Use and Sharing division, working in the field of Computational Biology, assisting researchers with software instrumentation. He is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Cape Town.

Amreesh is a member of AfPIF Program Committee.

Posted on March 11, 2021March 12, 2021 by wacren2020

Edward Moynihan

Edward Moynihan is the Principal Network Engagement Analyst at Indiana University. In this role, Edward supports the NEAAR and TransPac projects by working directly with scientists and researchers to help achieve better international file-transfer performance and to increase utilization of IU’s international research networking systems.

He also works closely with IN@IU’s international partners to promote the use of international research networking resources and to deliver enhanced functionality to research collaborators and other R and E networking stakeholders.

Posted on March 11, 2021March 12, 2021 by wacren2020

Antoine Delvaux

Antoine Delvaux has worked with International Networks as a perfSONAR trainer and workshop facilitator since 2016. He has been involved in the perfSONAR project since 2008 through the European GÉANT project where he as been a senior software developer and the GÉANT perfSONAR development team lead.

He has also worked on the Performance Measurement Platform consisting of a set of dozens of perfSONAR nodes deployed in Universities and Research and Education Networks in Europe, Africa and Asia.

Antoine holds a M.Sc.Eng. degree in Computer Science from the University of Liège, Belgium (1999). Throughout his career he has participated in different network and services monitoring activities, both on the operational and the software development sides, and for various (N)REN (Belnet, Dante, GÉANT, PSNC, WACREN)