Sennay Ghebreab

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Sennay Ghebreab
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BornJuly 21, 1973
Addis Abeba
NationalityDutch
Alma materUniversity of Amsterdam, MSc Technical Information Systems (1996), Ph.D. Computer Science (2002)
Scientific career
FieldsArtificial Intelligence, Social Data Science, Cognitive Neuroscience
InstitutionsUniversity of Amsterdam
ThesisStrings & Necklaces: On Learning and Browsing Medical Image Segmentations (2001)

Sennay Ghebreab, (born Addis Abeba, 21 July,1973) is a Dutch-Eritrean scholar in Artificial Intelligence whose work combines perspectives from computer science, cognitive neuroscience and social sciences. He is chair of the research group Socially-Intelligent Artificial Systems at the University of Amsterdam, program director for the master Information Studies and scientific director of Civic AI Lab, which is public-public cooperation between three Amsterdam parties – the municipality, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (VU) and the UvA – and the Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations.[1]. In 2020, he was recognized as one of the 200 most influential people in The Netherlands for his work to empower people and to create a more just and inclusive society with help of AI technology[2].

Ancestors and early life

Ghebreab is the great-grand son of Tewolde-Medhin Gebre-Medhin (1860–1930), and grand-son Isahac Tewoldemdhin (1898-1978). Tewolde-Medhin Gebre-Medhin, originally from the town of Tseazega Eritrea in the Horn of Africa, was a pastor, educator and translator[3][4]. He studied theology in Uppsala, Sweden from 1880-1884[5]. His son Isahac Tewoldemdhin, born in Ghelab Eritrea received is higher education at the American University in Beiruth and in Florence, Italy. In 1944, he was one of the team members who set up a symposium with the purpose of discussing the standardization of the writing and pronunciation of Tigrigna letters and words. During that year he also published the first book of arithmetic in Tigrigna, when he became the first Eritrean innovator in the field of abbreviations, equivalents of weights, measures and also the standardization of punctuation marks in Tigrigna. He also initiated and promoted the first Girls’ school in Asmara as well as in some other villages. In the 1950’s, after Major Snell, left Eritrea, Isahac became the Head of Education in Eritrea[6][7].

Ghebreab was born in Addis Abeba where his mother studied English at Addis Abeba University and father was director of Philips Electronics Ethiopia. In 1975 the family returned to Asmara, where his parents continued their underground activities for the Eritrean resistance, which was actively engaged in liberating Eritrea from Ethiopian occupation. When their resistance activities were revealed in 1979, the couple faced a life threathing situation and had to immediately flee the country together with their three children. That was the beginning of long journey through the harsh landscape of Eritrea to Sudan by foot, camels and jeeps. A journey that took place by night to hide from Ethiopian soliers at the fromt and from the MIGS that flew over and bombarded places frequently. After a stay of three months in Sudan they fled to Italy, where they stayed for another three months. Then they moved to the Netherlands, being the home country of Philips Electronics.

Education

Ghebreab did his M.Sc. in Technical Information Systems at the University of Amsterdam from 1992-1996. He graduated on on "A Visual Editor for Automated Feature Computation in Medical Image Database Management Systems". He received a Ph.D. degree in computer vision and medical imaging from the same university in 2001. Part of his PhD research, which resulted in the thesis "Strings and Necklaces: On Learning and Browsing Medical Image Segmentations", was conducted at the Image Processing and Analysis Group (IPAG) at Yale School of Medicine[8].

From 2002 until 2005 he was a postdoctoral fellow in the Biomedical Imaging Group Rotterdam (BIGR) at the Erasmus MC, University Medical Center, where he developed computational methods and algorithms for analyzing, mining and retrieving large sets of radiological and epidemiological images. While at the Erasmus MC his research interest gradually shifted from understanding and computationally modeling the perception and decision making processes of a specialized brain such as that of a radiologist, to perception and decision making processes of general brains: do everyday people also (unconsciously) exploit visual regularities in their natural environment?

Academic career

In 2005, he returned to the University of Amsterdam to establish a bridge between computer science (computer vision) and cognitive neuroscience (human vision). His research focused on testing computational models of vision against neural models of vision using large sets of fMRI, EEG and other modalities. In 2006, he participated in the first international brain reading competition, which challenged research groups worldwide to infer subjective experience from a rigorously collected fMRI data set associated with viewing of the American sitcom Home Improvement. He won the category "inferring individual faces" based on a newly developed machine learning method[9][10]. This was the first time the identity of an person was inferred from fMRI data using machine learning[11]

In 2010, Ghebreab developed the course interdisciplinary course “Information, communication and cognition” at the Amsterdam University College, where he addressed questions such as how does the brain use pattern recognition and bias, what are the information mechanism behind social bias, discrimination and exclusion, and what are the opportunities and risks of algorithmic bias? He and his students shared course content and outcomes through public lectures, interviews and social media[12]. In 2017, he initiated the pre-university college course The Racist Machine at the Free University of Amsterdam. This course aimed at educating high-school students from a wide range of neighborhoods about the social risks and opportunities of Artificial Intelligence.

In 2013, Ghebreab was appointed Head of Social Sciences at Amsterdam University College and responsible for 90 courses, 9 social science disciplines and 60 lecturers. He was tasked to prepare the social science program for the increasing complexity and diversity of society due to globalization and technological developments by 1) introducing new interdisciplinary courses to the curriculum such as “Race, Class and Gender Intersectionality”, “The Empathic Brain”, “Big Data” en “Framing in Politics and Economics”, 2) appointing socially engaged teachers with highly varying backgrounds, 3) bridging the teaching-research divide by introducing more research elements in existing courses, developing new research-intensive courses and engaging students in research activities of faculty members.

After researching and teaching pattern recognition and bias in neural, computational and social systems for over two decades, in 2020, Ghebreab shifted his is focusing more on the potential social opportunities of AI. He founded the Civic AI Lab for that very purpose. In 2001, The Good AI, an ecosystem that helps companies, policymakers, scholars, and talent achieve UN’s SDGs using fair, inclusive, and responsible AI, recognized the lab as one of 14 exemplary research institutes and labs around the world. Sennay and his team received an award by the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science and the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences for their continued commitment to involve the general public in fair and inclusive algorithmization of society[13]. He regularly appears on Dutch national media to talk about AI technology and its use for social justice and empowerment of citizens[14] [15][16]

Personal life

Ghebreab and his family remained active in the Eritrean community in the Netherlands in the 1980's and 1990's. In 1993 Sennay and other Eritrean-Dutch students started the Eritrean Students Union (ESU). Through monthly events, workshops , lectures on a variety of topics such as education and health ESU aimed at helping advance Eritreans in the home country and diaspora. He was active member of the Eritrean community until the end of the borderwar between Eritrea and Ethiopia in 2002. Following the war, he increasingly critized Eritrean leadership for failing its citizens in Eritrea and in diaspora. He's appearances in Dutch national media in 2015[17] and 2016[18], where he publicly criticized Eritrean leadership and supported Eritrean refugees caused much fuss among Eritreans.

In 2014, Ghebreab laid the foundation for an educational and social program at the Amsterdam University College for young bright people who had to seek refuge in the Netherlands from war and violence. Students, staff and management worked together to build a sustainable and effective program for these young bright people, which resulted in what is now known as the Right2Education foundation and The Isahac Teweldemedhin Scholarship for refugees. In June 2018, Right2Education presented its practices at the Together summit in New York. This summit was organized by the United Nations Academic Impact Initiative, and aimed at changing the negative narratives that so often surround refugees and migrants. Right2Education was voted as best practice at the summit, and the United Nations Academic Impact disseminated AUC's Right2Education initiative as a model around the world[19][20]

Ancillary activities

  • 2021 – now: member supervisory board NEMO Science Museum
  • 2020 – now: author Vrij Nederland
  • 2019 – now: member supervisory board PCOU Willibrord
  • 2019 – now: member advisory board Dutch Refugee Council
  • 2018 – now: chairman Foundation BOOST for Regugees
  • 2018 – now: member board Foundation Civic

References

  1. ↑ "The City of Amsterdam partners with local universities on new lab for social artificial intelligence | I amsterdam". www.iamsterdam.com. Retrieved 2021-05-13.
  2. ↑ december 2020, Tekst Wilco Dekker en Ben van Raaij 12; 05:00. "Dit zijn de invloedrijkste Nederlanders van 2020". Volkskrant Kijk Verder (in Nederlands). Retrieved 2021-05-13.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  3. ↑ Tubiana, Joseph (2012-10-22). "Siegbert Uhlig (ed.): Encyclopaedia Aethiopica. Volume 1". Aethiopica. 7: 194–211. doi:10.15460/aethiopica.7.1.294. ISSN 2194-4024.
  4. ↑ Shack, William A. (1980-04-08). "Evangelical Pioneers in Ethiopia: Origins of the Evangelical Church Mekane Yesus. By Gustav Arén. Stockholm: EFS Forlaget/Addis Ababa: Evangelical Church Mekane Yesus, 1978. (Studia Missionalia Upsaliensia, 32). Pp. 486, maps, bibl". Africa. 50 (2): 211–212. doi:10.2307/1159016. ISSN 0001-9720.
  5. ↑ Holmer, Rosa (1985). "Tewolde-Medhin Gebre-Medhin (1860-1930), pastor-educator-linguist: a short biography". Quaderni di studi Etiopici: 112–142.
  6. ↑ Piovanelli, Pierluigi (2017-10-02). "Alessandro Bausi, in collaboration with Siegbert Uhlig, eds, Encyclopaedia Aethiopica. Volume 5: Y–Z, Supplementa, Addenda et Corrigenda, Maps, Index". Aethiopica. 19: 264–267. doi:10.15460/aethiopica.19.1.953. ISSN 2194-4024.
  7. ↑ Yishak, Yoseph (1986). A Short Biography of the Teacher Isahac Teweldemedhin: War on Illiteracy. Asmara, Eritrea.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  8. ↑ Duncan, James S.; Staib, Lawrence H. (December 2003). "Image processing and analysis at IPAG". IEEE transactions on medical imaging. 22 (12): 1505–1518. doi:10.1109/tmi.2003.819935. ISSN 0278-0062. PMID 14649742.
  9. ↑ Ghebreab, Sennay; Smeulders, Arnold; Adriaans, Pieter (2007). "Predicting Brain States from fMRI Data: Incremental Functional Principal Component Regression". Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems. 20.
  10. ↑ Ghebreab, Sennay; Smeulders, Arnold W. M. (2011-05-01). "Identifying distributed and overlapping clusters of hemodynamic synchrony in fMRI data sets". Pattern Analysis & Applications. 14 (2): 175–192. doi:10.1007/s10044-010-0186-6. ISSN 1433-7541.
  11. ↑ "What's on your mind?". Nature Neuroscience. 9 (8): 981–981. August 2006. doi:10.1038/nn0806-981. ISSN 1546-1726.
  12. ↑ IMHO Sennay Ghebreab: Wat computers ons over discriminatie kunnen leren, retrieved 2021-05-13
  13. ↑ "Meer dan negentig teams van wetenschappers 'Gewaardeerd' voor structurele inzet wetenschapcommunicatie — KNAW". knaw.nl. Retrieved 2021-05-13.
  14. ↑ NTR, Omroep. "Gezichtsherkenning". De Kennis van Nu. Retrieved 2021-05-13.
  15. ↑ NTR, Omroep. "Atlas - Atlas". NTR (in Nederlands). Retrieved 2021-05-13.
  16. ↑ "Sennay Ghebreab: Bevooroordeelde robots - Brainwash". HUMAN (in Nederlands). Retrieved 2021-05-13.
  17. ↑ Bolwijn, Marjon (2015-11-23). "'Ze wonen hier in Klein-Eritrea'". de Volkskrant (in Nederlands). Retrieved 2021-05-13.
  18. ↑ "Zorgen om integratie Eritrese vluchtelingen". nos.nl (in Nederlands). Retrieved 2021-05-13.
  19. ↑ Amsterdam, Universiteit van (2018-06-11). "Right2Education presents at UN #JoinTogether conference - Amsterdam University College". Amsterdam University College - University of Amsterdam. Retrieved 2021-05-14.
  20. ↑ "3rd Session - Universities #JoinTogether Conference". United Nations Web TV. Retrieved 2021-05-14.

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