NUST consolidates ICISET and DSMLAI conference to success

The second international conference on Data Science, Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence (DSMLAI) and the first annual International Conference on Information Systems and Emerging Technologies (ICISET) were hosted at the Namibia University of Science and Technology (NUST), under the school of informatics, journalism and media technology. The conference took place from 23 to 25 November at the university's lower campus's new state-of-the-art high-tech transfer plaza select.

The international conferences' consolidation was held both physically and virtually to provide a global forum for researchers and practitioners to present and discuss recent advancements, trends, outcomes, observations and concerns in various facets of information systems. This also saw researchers and professionals from academia and the industry meeting and share cutting-edge development in the field.

The conference agenda was effectively organised to reflect the broad range of research issues in information systems and new technologies and to build links across various information systems research areas.

Amongst others, the conversation themes included human-computer interaction (HCI), cybersecurity, high-performance computing, information communication technology for decreasing climate change, block chain applications, health informatics, digital business and entrepreneurship, multimedia systems and applications.

Furthermore, the conference was highlighted by six keynote speakers, including Randall Carolissen and Machaka Mosehanna of Johannesburg Business School at the University of Johannesburg; Anicia Peters from the University of Namibia; Fransisca Oladipo,

the vice chancellor of Thomas Adewumi University, and Irwin Brown, the head of department and a professor of information systems at the University of Cape Town.

Authors were encouraged to participate in the conference by submitting papers that demonstrate research findings, projects, surveying activities and industry experiences that explain noteworthy advancements.



Timely and relevant

The vice chancellor of NUST, Erold Naomab, stated during his welcoming remarks that the themes of the conferences are timely and relevant as they speak to national imperatives to address socio-economic challenges using technology.

“The conferences will contribute to national development imperatives and one or more of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation's (Unesco) priorities as outlined in meeting terms strategy of UNESCO 2022, 2029 and also the approved programme of UNESCO which is 2022 and 2025,” he said.

NUST's associate professor for the department of informatics, Jude Osakwe, said the conference was engaging, innovative and collaborative.

“It was very successful. We had speakers from Namibia and various countries with innovative presentations,” he said. He added that the challenges faced during the implementation and planning of the conference were the timely submission of papers and timely response from authors.

“The next conference will take place from 17 to 19 October 2023”, Osakwe added.

Another NUST lecturer from the faculty of informatics, journalism and media technology, Gabriel Nhinda stated that the conference provided a platform for researchers to share their breaking and latest research works and that conferences of this calibre are rare to find and are far in between. He believes young academics need to publish high-quality research work in a high impact conference.

He further said it was a positive experience because they had the opportunity to network with various stakeholders and build new collaborations with other researchers from Africa.

Nhinda added that for the next conference, it would be great to have many papers from across the globe and for this annual conference to become a beacon of excellence in research in Africa.

“It was a positive experience, we had the opportunity to network with various stakeholders and built new collaborations with other researchers from Africa," he said.



200 participants

Professor and Unesco chair holder on secure high-performance computing for higher education and research at NUST, Dharm Singh Jat, said the conference also promoted communications and collaborations between researchers at dynastic national and international level.

Speaking during the conferences, he said ICISET was fortunate to receive 88 papers, of which 60 were accepted, and DSMLAI received 23 papers, of which 14 were accepted for the main technical programme after thorough international review processing.

Jat added that the conferences included over 200 participants and experts from 11 countries and four continents, including Namibia, South Africa, Nigeria, the United Arab Emirates, Zimbabwe, the United Kingdom, Uganda, Egypt, India, Botswana and the United States.

Although the first day of the in-person conference had more attendees than the second and third days, the conference met its objectives on a productive pace.

Participants were divided into break-out rooms, and all got a chance to present their research work and successfully engaged with other researchers, he said.