Staying Connected: First DAAD-AIMS scholarship holders and alumni meeting in Kigali

After a joint welcome dinner, the actual program of the scholarship holders' meeting began on 24 February 2025. Ms. Noemi Wetzel and Ms. Martina Maier (P24, DAAD), together with Ms. Carine Umulisa, Partnerships and Public Affairs Manager at AIMS Rwanda in Kigali, had organized a meeting for the scholarship holders and alumni living in African countries. A total of 23 people of 12 different nationalities took part, most of them doctoral students and postdocs funded sur-place at AIMS centers in Ghana, Cameroon, Rwanda, Senegal and South Africa.

After greetings from the Research and Scientific Development Manager of AIMS-Rwanda, Mr. Isambi Sailon Mbalawata, and the Cultural Attaché of the German Embassy in Rwanda, Mr. Marcel Consten, team leader Ms. Noemi Wetzel explained the work and goals of the DAAD and the program concerned, “Higher Education Cooperation with the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS)”, which has been funded by the now renamed Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space since 2012.

The first day was focused on research. During the poster presentation, which was designed as a competition, the scholarship holders presented their current research projects. Successes and challenges during the funding period were discussed as well, as were activities that went beyond research. The research topics included models for the intelligent control of solar-powered automated food storage systems, random constrained models for the predictive control of various microgrids, qualitative studies on fluid dynamics and dispersant models, intelligent control of water distribution networks, models to simulate the state of charge of rechargeable lithium-ion batteries, integrated modeling of the cellular notch signaling pathway, calculations of polarization in opinion exchange, mathematical approaches to understanding immunopathology - to name the most understandable topics for laymen like me. The presentations’ style was judged, and prizes were awarded by a jury consisting of the AvH-funded German Research Chair, Dr. Abebe Geletu, and the DAAD staff.

During the subsequent Gallery Walk, the participants took the opportunity to exchange ideas- in this way, overlaps in research interests were identified and opportunities for cooperation were explored. Dr. Christine Wandolo from the DAAD branch office in Nairobi then gave a virtual presentation on the various funding opportunities for doctoral students and postdocs in the field of applied mathematics.

The first day of getting to know each other was rounded off with a joint excursion to Kandt House, which houses an exhibition on the pre-colonial and German colonial past of present-day Rwanda, designed with funding from the German Federal Foreign Office in collaboration with Rwandan and German researchers.

The following day began with a virtual welcome address by head of section P24, Ms. Ruth Schimanowski, and continued with lively discussions on topics brought up by the participants, such as ‘Planning a research stay at a German university’, ‘What role can alumni and scholarship holders play in the further development of the program’ and 'What are the research topics of the future?’. Afterwards, Dr. Faith Mugisha Ahabyoona, DAAD alumna and Dean of the Faculty of Business and Management at Cavendish University in Uganda, encouraged the participants in a workshop to discuss topics such as leadership and mentorship in research and business, motivation and resilience, as well as opportunities for social engagement. Mr. Admir Lleshi (DAAD) then showed the participants various virtual ways in which they could maintain the contacts they had made beyond the meeting and stay in touch as alumni.

AIMS Rwanda paper at the 13th International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR 2025) in Singapore 

Donald Kougang Yombi, a DAAD PhD scholarship holder, recently participated in the International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR 2025)

held in Singapore. ICLR is one of the world’s highest impact conferences in the field of machine learning and artificial intelligence research.

Donald’s paper, titled Learning High-Degree Parities: The Crucial Role of the Initialization, was accepted for poster presentation at the conference. The paper is co-authored by Emmanuel Abbe (EPFL), Elisabetta Cornacchia (INRIA Paris), and Jan Hązła (AIMS Rwanda). Donald had the opportunity to present the work in person during the poster sessions. The paper explores how the choice of the initial distribution of neural network parameters can impact the learnability of certain target functions, in this case, high-degree parities. It also introduces a novel measure, Gradient Alignment, which can be used to assess, already at initialization, whether training is likely to succeed or fail.

At ICLR, Donald engaged in fruitful discussions about his work, listened to cutting-edge talks and ideas in machine learning and artificial intelligence, and connected with fellow researchers from around the world. He particularly appreciated meeting African colleagues, including former DAAD scholars. It was his first time in Asia, and he found Singapore's mix of cultures and advanced infrastructure especially inspiring.

1st Workshop and School on the Theory of Quantum Learning Algorithms in South Africa

Date: 27.10.2025 - 30.10.2025 

Place: AIMS South Africa 

AIMS South Africa will host the "1st AIMS Workshop and School on the Theory of Quantum Learning Algorithms", organized jointly by Dr. Ryan Sweke from AIMS South Africa, and a team of students and researchers from the FU Berlin, led by Prof. Dr. Jens Eisert. A website for the event with more detailed information can be found here.

As stated on the website, applications for attendance, for both the workshop and school, will open in July 2025.

I. MLOA Conference

2nd African Conference on Machine Learning, Optimization and Applications (MLOA)

Conference Dates: 22.09.2025 -24.09.2025

Deadline: Abstracts (max. 2 pages) must be submitted by 30.06.2025

Acceptance Notification: 15.07.2025

Deadline for Registration : 15.08.2025

For more detailed information please click here

II. Workshop TU Ilmenau

Optimization on Artificial Intelligence Applications

Workshop Dates: 23.07.2025 -24.07.2025

Deadline for Registration : 10.07.2025

For more detailed information please click here

PDES and Randomness Summer School School and Conference: AIMS Lecture 3rd Edition

Join us for the 3rd edition of the "PDES and Randomness" School and Conference, a high-level event bringing together young researchers, PhD students, and international experts around partial differential equations (PDEs) and their interactions with random phenomena.

The event will take place at AIMS Senegal from July 21 to 31, 2025.

Publications/papers produced and in progress in 2024/2025.

Preprint: « Probabilistic Global well posedness for the energy supercritical Nonlinear Schrödinger equation on Compact Manifolds »
Link

This research has been done by Prof Mouhamadou Sy and his 2 DAAD PhD Students AIMS Senegal (Longmou Moffo Filone and Seynabou Gueye ) and addresses the problem of the existence of globally well-posed solutions for energy-supercritical Schrödinger equations on compact manifolds.

The results of this work have been presented at the International Conference on Mathematics and Its Applications in Ghana,  December 2024 by Longmou Filone and at the Conference SPDEvent Bielefeld 2025 by Seynabou Gueye.

Research in Progress : « Global Well-Posedness of the Trudinger Nonlinear Schrödinger Equation in the Energy Space H^1 »

This work will be posted soon and focuses on the existence and uniqueness of  global solutions in the energy space  H^1 on compact manifolds of the Trudinger equation. The project is conducted by Mouhamadou Sy and his DAAD PhD student Filone Gilson Longmou Moffo.

This equation arises naturally in nonlinear optics, especially in the modeling of self-trapped laser beams in plasma, as first described in the seminal paper by Lam, Lippmann, and Tappert (1977). In that physical context, the exponential nonlinearity captures the self-focusing behavior of a laser beam whose radius is significantly larger than the vacuum wavelength.  Also this equation has a various applications such as in telecommunications, fluid dynamic, quantum mechanic and Plasma physic.  From a mathematical perspective, the exponential nonlinearity is critical in two dimensions, this means that the bad behavior of the equation due to the nonlinearity lies at the very limit of what mathematical analysis can control.  This makes the problem of constructing local solutions very, very difficult, particularly regarding uniqueness. Moreover, since the nonlinearity is exponential, the potential energy appearing in the total energy of the system is more significantly and cannot be control by the kinetic H^1 energy. This means that energy conservation is not sufficient to control the potential energy, which also makes the problem of global well posedness in H^1 very challenging. In our upcoming work, we address theses challenges by building a probabilistic framework that provides both existence and uniqueness.                                      The results of this work have been presented at the International conference SPDEvent Bielefeld 2025 by Filone Gilson Longmou Moffo.

Contribution from 

Longmou Moffo Filone Gilson / PHD Student at AIMS Senegal 

German Research Chair : Prof. Mouhamadou Sy at AIMS Senegal 

AIMS Senegal 

Open Call - PhD and Postdoc Position @ AIMS South Africa

The Quantum@AIMS research group, led by Dr Ryan Sweke, is offering in cooperation with Prof. Dr. Jens Eisert at Freie Universität Berlin, two three year Ph.D positions in "Quantum computing and quantum information", with the possibility of an additional one year extension.

Additionally there will be a 2 year Postdoctaral Fellowship within the Quantum@AIMS research group. 

Dr Ryan Sweke is the Alexander von Humboldt German Research Chair of Mathematics and its Applications at AIMS South Africa, as well as a senior lecturer at Stellenbosch University.

Detailed information regarding the PHD call please find here. 

Detailed information regarding the Postdoctaral Fellowship please find here.

DAAD Funding Possibilities for people from Subsaharan African Countries

On our scholarship database you will find information about our DAAD scholarship programmes for international students and researchers as well as offers from other selected funding organisations. 

More details for peple from Subsaharan African Countries please find here.