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the gem - editorial - Feb 2025
We had another great month focused on creating and developing the innovation ecosystem in South Africa, despite a decrease in funding from the USA. We successfully launched the open call for the African STARS Fellowship, aimed at bridging the gap between research and industry to foster meaningful employment in Africa. This fellowship will support 40 brilliant scientists who will spend either 4 months or 1 year with us to transform how innovation enters the market on the African continent.
To enhance the health innovation ecosystem in South Africa, we hosted the Open International Start-up program called BRAIN (Bridging Research And Innovation). This Pan-African initiative aims to strengthen the DeepTech ecosystem in Africa through a holistic approach, enabling scientist-entrepreneurs addressing critical challenges to access world-class opportunities and resources. The BRAIN bootcamp was an intensive 5-day program (14 hours a day), featuring 10 of Africa’s most exciting start-ups that worked to advance their business plans and pitch to venture capitalists in South Africa.
In addition, we concentrated on high-level science and partnerships. In February 2025, we published two significant papers in artificial intelligence: the first, a collaborative perspective in Nature with Oxford University and the University of Copenhagen, discusses how AI will enhance infectious diseases research and innovation. We also released a new software application employing a machine learning approach for dengue subtyping, named Craft (Chaos Random Forest). This software innovatively uses a feature extraction technique that modifies the Frequency Chaos Game to be bitwise, combined with a Random Forest classification model for rapid and accurate classification of thousands of dengue genomes in seconds. Amid all this hard work, we trained for the 100 Km Cape Town Cycle Tour to help raise funding for students in need at Stellenbosch.
text: Prof Tulio de Oliveira
