In this AI & Equality 
open studion, Dr. Lilian Wanzare will focus on their ongoing research working with the deaf community to collect Kenyan sign language dataset, the challenges faced, the prototype models the team has developed and the feedback from the sign language community regarding the whole process.
Dr. Lilian Wanzare is a lecturer and chair of the Department of Computer Science at Maseno University. Her research interests are in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, in particular Natural Language Processing (NLP) and building text processing tools for low-resource languages. She has served as the principal investigator for several research projects funded by BMGF, LACUNA, IDRC, AI4D among others. She has pioneered the KenCorpus: “Kenyan Language Corpus for NLP and Machine Learning research” project that looks at building datasets for training NLP tools for under-served languages, particularly those spoken in Kenya, with use cases geared towards Agriculture, Education and Health.
Dr. Lilian is currently the PI of the African Next Voices: Kenya project funded by BMGF spear heading research in data curation for low-resource Kenyan languages. She also works on sign language research, particularly Kenyan sign language, researching ways of bridging language barriers using virtual signing avatars. She serves as an advisor for several NLP projects including Digital Expert Group Africa for exploring development of Language Technology in Africa under BMGF, Tech Innovators platform (THiNK) community of practice, among others. She holds a PhD degree in Computational Linguistics and an Msc. in Language Science and Technology from Saarland University, Germany, and a Bsc in Computer Science from University of Nairobi.
Last modified: February 17, 2025