Dr Ndalinoshisho Liita-Iyaloo Naukushu Cairney (Ph.D).
I have a Ph.D. in International Health Policy from the University of Edinburgh; a Master of Science (MSc.) in Environmental Policy from the Bard Center for Environmental Policy; and a Bachelor’s of Arts (B.A) in Natural Sciences (Concentration in Biology) from Bard College. I speak English, Oshiwambo (A Namibian language), French, and I am currently learning Japanese.
Since September 2022, I have been employed as an Entrepreneurship Trainer for the School of Informatics at the University of Edinburgh. My role was created to support Students and Staff in the School of Informatics to realise their entrepreneurial ambitions by providing them with 1-2-1 dedicated business plan development support, and by guiding them to other University of Edinburgh resources. I am also the course organiser and primary lecturer for the Entrepreneurship and Innovation Project (this course), which is open to Year-3 undergraduate students in the School of Informatics.
In 2012, while I was a Ph.D. student at the University of Edinburgh, I invented a reusable menstrual hygiene device (KOREE®™) that was initially aimed at young women from low-income households. I also developed a reproductive health education framework aimed at adolescent women (10-16 years old) called “Harness Your Menstrual Cycle”, which seeks to enhance the individual and social capabilities of young women through Menstrual health awareness, as reflected on the digital education platform https://www.firstperiod.org. I use my own entrepreneurial experiences as a teaching guide for students at the University of Edinburgh, while I continue to further advance my commercial vision for KOREE®™ menstrual health products.
Over the 11-weeks of the Entrepreneurship & Innovation Project (EIP), I will be supported by teaching assistant (Katarzyna Szymaniak "Kasia" - Ph.D. Candidate in the School of Informatics), Gleb Olav (Year-4 undergraduate student in the School of Informatics), and a variety of weekly guest speakers.
Katarzyna Szymaniak, Ph.D. Student in Biomedical AI at Edinburgh University
Katarzyna Szymaniak, a Ph.D. candidate within the University of Edinburgh's School of Informatics, is conducting her doctoral research with the support of the EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Biomedical Artificial Intelligence. Her research is centered on enhancing adaptability and robustness in myoelectric control through the application of active learning, transfer learning, domain generalization, and representation learning for human-in-the-loop interactions. To bridge the gap between scientific advancements and real-life applications, a platform is being developed for real-time calibration, feedback interfaces, and motor classification.
Katarzyna's research methodology involves the fusion of various machine learning paradigms and innovative techniques. The ultimate goal is to create a framework that evolves over time, adapting to human behaviour through continuous learning. The result is envisioned as a responsive and interpretable system with co-adaptive and synchronous learning capabilities between machine and human.