The Institute for Intelligent Systems (IIS) at the University of Johannesburg (UJ), is delighted to announce the appointment of Dr Mpho Raborife as Associate Professor and the new Deputy Director. She will be joining the Institute in March 2022.
Prof Raborife holds a PhD in Computer Science and her main areas of research are computational linguistics. In this role, her focus, using both computer science and phonology, is on the limitations of human language technologies and how they can be improved for speech technologies.
Joining the Institute, Prof Raborife, said: “I am excited to be given this opportunity to push forward the excellent field of computational phonology and the research being carried out in IIS. I look forward to making sure that this enquiry and research enables us to understand the manner in which machines process and generate our local languages, and in turn, propose policy responses that make them better.”
Commenting on the appointment Prof Babu Sena Paul, Director of IIS, said: “I along with all the colleagues of the IIS are delighted to welcome Prof Raborife. She is a top-class researcher with extensive knowledge of developing algorithms and statistical processes. She also is well connected across the hi-tech community and will help the profession improve both its appeal to diverse audiences and have a positive social impact.”
Prof Raborife leaves her previous role as a Senior Lecturer in the department of Applied Information Systems.