In a sunlit classroom in Kigali, Rwanda, Vincent Ogwal fixates on his computer screen, lines of code cascading before him. The young graduate student from Uganda grapples with questions that have long fascinated him, questions at the intersection of technology and neuroscience: How can we decode the brain’s intricate signals? What secrets of human cognition might computational models unveil?
Ogwal was one of 20 undergraduate and graduate students from across Africa selected to explore how computational neuroscience and machine learning might help us understand the brain’s deepest mysteries. In mid-July, they gathered at the Carnegie Mellon University (CMU)-Africa campus in a highly competitive summer course organized by TReND in Africa (Teaching and Research in Natural Sciences for Development in Africa), a volunteer-run charity supporting scientific advancement across the continent.
