Houriiyah Tegally of Stellenbosch University’s Centre for Epidemic Response and Innovation is among four researchers recognised in the first AI for Discovery awards.
The organisers announced the winners on 6 November after a ceremony in London. Tegally is listed in the Health and Life Sciences category.
Her work combines artificial intelligence with genomic, epidemiological and climate data to improve infectious-disease monitoring and outbreak forecasting, according to the award announcement.
The programme is run by Nature Awards with Boston Consulting Group’s BCG X AI Science Institute. Each of the four winners is to receive a US$10,000 development grant and tailored virtual training to support further research.
The other winners are Michael Skinnider of Princeton University, Kevin Jablonka of Friedrich Schiller University Jena and Yang Chai of Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Their work spans molecular discovery, scientific-data analysis and AI-enabled sensing.
The recognition concerns research and its potential application. It does not establish a new treatment, an outbreak warning for South Africa or a guarantee that disease outbreaks can be predicted.
Archive photograph of the Stellenbosch University Library entrance, taken on 28 March 2018; not CERI’s laboratory, Tegally or the London award ceremony. Photo: KigvD / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Stellenbosch_University_Library_Entrance.jpg . Licence: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ . Original unchanged; display crops and resizes. Adapted display images are shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.
