Shakir Mohamed
Director of Research at Google DeepMind
A South African machine learning researcher, Director of Research at Google DeepMind and co-founder of the Deep Learning Indaba.
Biography
Shakir Mohamed is a Director of Research at Google DeepMind in London and an Honorary Professor at University College London, working in statistical machine learning and AI, with applied work in healthcare and the environment and on the ethics and diversity of AI. He left Lenasia, a township in south Johannesburg, to study engineering at the University of the Witwatersrand in 2002, earning his undergraduate and master's degrees there in electrical and information engineering, and completed his PhD at the University of Cambridge.
He co-founded the Deep Learning Indaba with Professor Benjamin Rosman, a non-profit that aims to build pan-African capacity and leadership in AI, with members from 49 African countries. He chairs the International Scientific Advisory Committee for CIFAR's Pan-Canadian AI Strategy, sits on the boards of ICML, ICLR and NeurIPS, and is an Associate Fellow at the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence. He describes his work as "AI with social purpose," and TIME named him to its 2023 list of the 100 most influential people in AI.
Notable contributions
Co-founded the Deep Learning Indaba
Co-founded the Deep Learning Indaba with Benjamin Rosman, a grassroots non-profit that aims to build pan-African capacity and leadership in AI and now has members from 49 African countries.
Leads research at Google DeepMind
Serves as Director of Research at Google DeepMind in London, working on machine learning principles and sociotechnical AI.
Named to the TIME100 AI list
Named in TIME's 100 Most Influential People in AI in 2023.
