Dr Tshiamo Motshegwa

@ CEO, BotsREN, Botswana

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