D R. P E T E R W A I G A N J O W A G A C H A PERSONAL P. O B O X 4 3 7 3, N A I R O B I - 0 0 5 0 6 w a i g a n j o @ u o n b i. a c. k e P H O N E 4 4 4 7 8 7 0 / 4 4 4 4 9 1 9 M O B I L E 0 7 3 3-7 8 8 5 9 8 Date of Birth: 1969 Sex: Male Marital Status: Married OBJECTIVE To teach Computer Science and to undertake research. To integrate ICT in education, to apply ICTs to solve local social challenges and make learning more interesting and flexible to learners. To consult in the Computer Science / ICT domain, and develop computer systems. (Expertise in Machine Learning and Data Mining.) MEMBERSHIP AfLaT.org African Langauge Language network (co-founder) EPROM Entrepreunuership program on mobile phone programming MIT/UoN (co-founder) MoPRA.org Mobile Phone Research Africa Kenya Bureau of Standards I.T Technical standards committee University of Nairobi Alumini Association EXPERIENCE 1996 to date School of Computing & Informatics, University of Nairobi Senior Lecturer (2006 to date); Lecturer (1998 2006); Assistant Lecturer (1996 1998) Conducting Lectures, tutorials and supervising both undergraduate and post graduate Diploma and Masters students., Development of undergraduate and post graduate Computer Science and Information System courses., Development of a Modular Certificate in Computing course for all age groups, PhD supervision 2003 2006 School of Computing & Informatics, University of Nairobi Lecturer/Tutor Conducting Lectures, tutorials and supervising Diploma students in Computer and Electrical courses. 1996 Kenya Institute of Management, Nairobi Lecturer (Part-time) Conducting Lectures, tutorials and supervising Certificate and Diploma students in Information Systems courses. 1992 1993 Kiambu Institute of Science & Technology, Kiambu Lecturer/Tutor Conducting Lectures, tutorials and supervising Certificate and Diploma students in Mathematics and Physics. 1
EDUCATION 1998 2003 University of Nairobi, Nairobi in collaboration with Vrije University Brussels, Belgium. Ph.D, Computer Science. Specialty: Machine Learning and Data mining. Supervisors: Prof. Bernard Manderick - Vrije University Brussels (VUB), Belgium, and Dr. Katherine Getao - School of Computing & Informatics, University of Nairobi, Kenya 1993 1996 Shanghai University, Shanghai, Peoples Republic of China MSc. Computer Science & Applications 1988 1991 University of Nairobi, Nairobi BSc. (Hons) Physics 1986 1987 Mangu High School, Thika, A-level 1982 1985 Nakuru High School, Nakuru, O-level PUBLICATIONS AND ACADEMIC PRESENTATIONS (SELECTED) Book Chapters 1. A Corpus-based Survey of Four Electronic Swahili English Bilingual Dictionaries. De Pauw, Guy, Gilles-Maurice de Schryver, & Peter Waiganjo Wagacha (2009). Lexikos. 19, 2. Automatic Diacritic Restoration for Resource-Scarce Languages, Guy De Pauw, Peter W. Wagacha and Gilles-Maurice de Schryver. Book Series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Book: Text, Speech and Dialogue, Springer Berlin / Heidelberg, Volume: 4629/2007, Pg 170-179, ISBN 978-3-540-74627-0 (August 2007) 3. Strengthening Research and Capacity Building in Computer Science: Case of the School of Computing and Informatics, University of Nairobi, Peter W. Wagacha, Katherine Getao and Bernard Manderick. Special topics in computing and ICT research: Measuring Computing Research Excellence and Vitality. Editors Ddembe Williams & Venansius Baryamureeba, Volume I, Fountain publishers, Kampala, ISBN 13: 978-9970-02-592-3. Pg 44-55 (2006) 4. Adaptive and Optimisation Predictive Text Entry for Short Message Service (Sms) Peter W. Wagacha, Dennis Chege. Special topics in Computing and ICT research: Advances in Systems Modelling and ICT Applications. Editors Joseph Kizza, Janet Aisbett, Andrew Vince, Tom Wanyama, Volume II, Fountain publishers, Kampala, ISBN 13: 978-9970-02-604- 3. Pg 65-76 (2006) 5. Data-Driven Part-of-Speech Tagging of Kiswahili, Guy De Pauw, Gilles- Maurice de Schryver and Peter W. Wagacha, Book Series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Book: Text, Speech and Dialogue, Springer Berlin / Heidelberg, Volume: 4188/2006, ISBN 978-3-540-39090-9 (September 2006) Journals 1. Non-obtrusive determination of learning styles in adaptive web-based learning, Robert Oboko, Peter Wagacha, Elijah Omwenga, Z. Odotte. East Africa Journal of Information Sciences, 2009. ISSN: 1995-1442, Vol I No. 002 (2009) Pg 19-32. 2. Browsing impact of large herbivores on Acacia xanthophloea Benth in Lake Nakuru National Park, Kenya, Dharani N., Kinyamario J. I., Wagacha P. W., Rodrigues A. J., Africa Journal of Ecology, 2008 2
3. Swahili Text-to-Speech System, Kamanda Ngugi, Peter W. Wagacha, W. Okelo-Odongo, African Journal of Science and Technology (AJST) African Network of Scientific and Technological Institutions (ANSTI/UNESCO) Volume 6 No. 1, July 2005, Pg 80-89 4. A model for introducing and implementing E-learning for delivery of educational content within the African context, Elijah I. Omwenga, Timothy M. Waema, Peter W. Wagacha, African Network of Scientific and Technological Institutions (ANSTI/UNESCO) Volume 5 No1, June 2004, Pg 34-46 Selected Conference Proceedings 1. The SAWA Corpus: a Parallel Corpus English Swahili, De Pauw, Guy, P. W. Wagacha, & Gilles-Maurice de Schryver (2009). (De Pauw G., de Schryver G., LevinL., Ed.).Proceedings of the First Workshop on Language Technologies for African Languages (AfLaT 2009). 9 16. 2. Bootstrapping Machine Translation for the Language Pair English Kiswahili., De Pauw, Guy, P. W. Wagacha, & Gilles-Maurice de Schryver (2008). (AisbettJ., GibbonG., RodriguesA J., MiggaJ K., NathR., RenardelG R., Ed.).Strengthening the Role of ICT in Development. 30-37. 3. Automatic Diacritic Restoration for Resource-Scarce Languages, Guy De Pauw, Peter W. Wagacha and Gilles-Maurice de Schryver. To Appear in Proceedings of TEXT, SPEECH and DIALOGUE Conference, 2007, 3rd 7th September 2007, Plzen, Czech 4. Bootstrapping Morphological Analysis of Gikuyu, Using Unsupervised Maximum Entropy Learning, Guy De Pauw, and Peter W. Wagacha, To Appear in Proceedings of the INTERSPEECH 2007 conference, 27th 30th August 2007, Antwerp, Belgium. 5. The Sawa Corpus: a parallel corpus English Kiswahili, Guy De Pauw & Peter W. Wagacha, To Appear in Proceedings of the 10th International Pragmatics Conference (International Pragmatics Association), 8th 13th July 2007 Gotenborg, Sweden. 6. Unsupervised Induction of Dholuo Word Classes using Maximum Entropy Learning, Guy De Pauw, Peter W. Wagacha and Dorothy Atieno Abade, Proceedings of the 1st International Conference in Computer Science and ICT (COSCIT 2007), 5th 7th February 2007 Nairobi 7. Data-Driven Part-of-Speech Tagging of Kiswahili, Guy De Pauw, Gilles- Maurice de Schryver, Peter W. Wagacha, Proceedings of the Ninth International Conference on TEXT, SPEECH and DIALOGUE (TSD 2006) May 2006 8. Sigmoid weighted adaptive predictive text entry for short message service (SMS), Peter W. Wagacha and Dennis Chege. Proceedings of the 2 nd Annual International Conference and Workshop on Sustainable Research Excellence in Computing (SREC 06), Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda 6 th - 9 th August 2006. 9. A Grapheme-Based Approach for Accent Restoration in Gĩkũyũ, Peter W. Wagacha, Guy De Pauw and Pauline W. Githinji. Proceedings of the 5 th Language Resources and Evaluation Conference LREC Conference (Pg. Session P17-E) 23-26 th May 2006, Genoa, Italy 10. Development of a Corpus for Gĩkũyũ using machine learning techniques, Peter W. Wagacha, Guy De Pauw and Katherine Getao Proceedings of the Networking the development of language resources for African Workshop, at the 5 th Language Resources and Evaluation Conference (LREC) Pg 27-30. 22 nd May 2006, Genoa, Italy 11. On Support Vector and Relevance Vector Machines, Peter Waiganjo 3
Wagacha, Bernard Manderick, Maina E. Muuro. BNAIC 2005 Proceedings of the Seventeenth Belgium-Netherlands Conference on Artificial Intelligence October 17-18, 2005. K.Verbeeck, K. Tuyls, A. Nowe, B. Manderick, B. Kuijpers (Eds). Pg 297-304 12. A Framework for Distributed Learning Objects Repository in Developing Economies, Tarcisio K. Mbogo, Elijah I. Omwenga, Peter W. Wagacha, Proceedings of the ICT and Education conference, Santa Clara, Cuba February 2006 13. Strengthening Research and Capacity Building in Computer Science: Case of School of Computing & Informatics, University of Nairobi. Peter Waiganjo Wagacha, Katherine Getao, Bernard Manderick. International Workshop on research, Makerere University, Kampala August 2005 14. Benchmarking Support Vector Machines using StatLog Methodology Peter Waiganjo Wagacha, Bernard Manderick, Katherine Getao - Annual Machine Learning Conference of Belgium and the Netherlands (Benelearn 2004). Page 185-190. 15. Testability Prediction for Sequential Circuits Using Neural Network Shiyi Xu, Peter Waiganjo, Percy G. Dias and Bole Shi - Proceedings of the 6 th Asian Test Symposium (ATS '97) Page 48-55 Selected Workshop papers 1. Non-obtrusive determination of learning styles in adaptive web-based learning, Robert Oboko, Peter Wagacha, Arno Libotton, Elijah Omwenga. Proceedings of the Moi University Third Annual International Conference, 31st July- 4th August, 2007, Moi University, Eldoret 2. A model for introducing and implementing E-learning for delivery of educational content within the African context, Elijah I. Omwenga, Timothy M. Waema, Peter W. Wagacha, International ICT Workshop: Application of ICT in enhancing education higher learning education, April 28-30, 2004, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Thesis. Ph.D. Thesis. Support Vector Machines: A critical empirical evaluation. School of Computing & Informatics, University of Nairobi, 2003 MSc. Thesis. Sequential Circuit Testability Parameter Prediction using Artificial Neural Networks. Shanghai University, 1996 CURRENT RESEARCH Areas of on-going research Telemedicine - ICT in the medical domain for Africa This involves the use of available, affordable and accessible technology for medical data, decision support and applications Computational Linguistics This involve the building of local language corpora; development of language technology tools and applications for these generally resource poor languages. Machine learning in Natural language Processing Machine learning which is learning from data examples provides unique opportunities and tools in the development of resources for local languages Mobile phone programming & Reality Mining The uptake of mobile telephony in Africa has been phenomenal. There are interesting applications that we are 4
building for use in our local environment. These include routine data collection tools for health workers, survileance reporting, feedback mechanisms, utility data collection for billing systems, GIS enhancement for decision making, local language Applications,..etc. CURRENT COURSES TEACHING Undergraduate Level Management Information System Decision Support Systems Foundations of Learning & Adaptive Systems (Machine Learning) Digital Electronics Data structures and Analysis and Design of Algorithms Mobile phone Programming Python programming Postgraduate Level Health Information System Analysis and Design Machine Learning Introduction to Bioinformatics Foundations of Artificial Intelligence Managament of Information Systems MA Planning & Project Management programme Information Systems Challenges in Management MSC AND PHD SUPERVISION PHD: 2006 - todate Robert Oboko, School of Computing & Informatics Title: Adaptivivity enhancement of e-learning platforms. MSC: 2001 - todate 25 students on various topics and titles (available on request) EXTERNAL EXAMINATION Catholic University of Eastern Africa (CUEA), Nairobi, Kenya, BSc Computer Science - 2007 to 2009 KCA University, Nairobi, Kenya - BBIT (Infornation Technology) 2006 to date Makerere University, Uganda Faculty of Information Technology, BSc. IT 2009 to date Makerere University, Uganda - Information Technology, MSc Thesis - 2006 to date Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technlogy, Computer Science, MSc Thesis - 2007 to date ACADEMIA CONFERENCE ACTIVITIES Programme committee member AI-D - Artificial Intelligence for Development 2009-2010, an AAAI symposium (www.ai-d.org) Programme committee member African Language Technology workshop at LREC 2009, 2010 Programme sub-committee (Computer Science) member SREC and ICCIR (International Conference on Computing and ICT Research), Kampala, Uganda (2006 to date) ACADEMIA & REAL WORLD ACTIVITIES 5
2006 - todate Mobile phone research and development, mobile phone programming with EPROM programme 2007- todate Kenya Society for the Blind (Ksblind.org) Collaboration to develop and enhance ICT tools including mobile phones for the blind and visially impaired. PalNet Localization Project team member in an Africa, IDRC funded project proposal for localization of African langaunges Co-founder Mobile phone Research Africa (MoPRA) www.mopra.org CONSULTANCY (SELECTED JOBS) January June 2009 Ministries of Health, Kenya: Health information systems and software review and development of a new conceptual model for an integrated Health Management Information Systems for Kenya July - August 2006 Kenya Railways Corporation; Staff Retrenchment Software Module Audit and Certification Data Systems specialist, Consulting with University of Nairobi Enterprises and Services Ltd. (UNES) (Estimated value of retrenchment Ksh.4 Billion.) February 2005 Ongoing Ministry of Health (Ministerial Telemedicine Working Group) (Consultant representing School of Computing & Informatics, University of Nairobi) October 2004 March 2005 Inter University Council of East Africa (IUCEA) Website development Project Consultant, Consulting with University of Nairobi Enterprises and Services Ltd. (UNES) September 2003 January 2004 Inter University Council of East Africa (IUCEA) Varsity Net Project on e-governance for East African Community assessment (funded by Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) - Consultant November December 2003 Kenya Revenue Authority IT Modernization Tender Bid Evaluation. Consulting with University of Nairobi Enterprises & Services (UNES) and School of Computing & Informatics. (Estimated value KSh. 60 Million) OTHERS Speak passable Mandarin (Chinese), Clean driving License REFEREES Available on request. Dated: 12 th January 2010 6