Rhodes>Mathematics>Research>Artificial Intelligence Research Group (AIRG)

Rhodes Artificial Intelligence Research Group (RAIRG)

Rhodes Artificial Intelligence Research Group (RAIRG) is based in the Department of Mathematics. The academics in the group have expertise in applied mathematics, computer science, Bayesian techniques, artificial intelligence, signal processing, statistics, and modern astronomical data processing/analysis. Interdisciplinary research thrusts are a major ambition of the group. We welcome MSc, Ph.D., and postdoc candidates willing to learn and contribute. 

Staff:

Prof Marcellin Atemkeng (Coordinator), email: m.atemkeng@ru.ac.za 

Mr Sisipho Hamlomo, email: S.Hamlomo@ru.ac.za

 

Available Projects:

Honours, MSc, PhD

 

Current students:

Siphendulwe Zaza

Degree: PhD

Subject: Applied mathematics

Field of Study: Machine Learning
Research: 
Supervisor(s): Prof Marcellin Atemkeng & Dr Taryn Murray (SAIAB)
Based: Grahamstown
Future aims: 
 
 
Nicole Oyetunji
Student_RAIRG
 
Degree: PhD

Subject: Applied mathematics

Field of Study: Machine Learning 
Research: 
Supervisor(s): Dr Taryn Murray (SAIAB) & Prof Marcellin Atemkeng
Based: Grahamstown
Future aims: 
 
 
Brian Welman

 

Degree: PhD
Subject: Physics
Field of Study: Machine Learning, Astronomy and LLM
Research: 
Supervisor(s): Distinguished Prof Oleg Smirnov & Prof Marcellin Atemkeng 
Based: Grahamstown
Future aims: 
 
 
sisipho hamlomo

 

Degree: PhD
Subject: Applied Mathematics
Field of Study: Fundamental Machine Learning
Research: 
Supervisor(s): Prof Marcellin Atemkeng 
Based: Grahamstown
Future aims: 
 
 
Georgina Bianca Fiorentinos

MSc student maths

Degree: MSc
Subject: Applied mathematics
Field of Study: Fundamental Machine Learning
Research: This research explores the optimisation and effectiveness of deep learning architectures, with an emphasis on convolutional neural networks. It analyses different architectures and their influence on the signal-to-noise propagation during training.
Supervisor(s): Prof Marcellin Atemkeng 
Based: Cape Town
Future aims: As I am already working in industry as a Data Scientist, I aim to continue applying my learnings to real-world problems.
 
 
Masixole Jojo

MSc student Maths

Degree: MSc
Subject:  Applied mathematics
Field of Study: Machine learning
Research:
Supervisor(s): Dr Taryn Murray (SAIAB) & Prof Marcellin Atemkeng 
Based: Grahamstown
Future aims:  
 
  
 
Casey Chuma 

 

Degree: MSc
Subject:  Applied mathematics
Field of Study: Machine learning
Research:
Supervisor(s): Prof Marcellin Atemkeng 
Based: Grahamstown
Future aims: 
 
Nkosinathi Ntuli 

 

Degree: MSc
Subject:  Applied mathematics
Field of Study: Machine learning
Research:
Supervisor(s): Prof Francesca Porri (SAIAB) & Prof Marcellin Atemkeng 
Based: Grahamstown
Future aims: 
 

Alumni (graduated at RAIRG):

  • Georgina Bianca Fiorentinos (MSc 2026, distinction)
  • Buntu Noganta (Honours 2026, distinction)
  • Katlego Magabane (Honours 2026)
  • Siphendulwe Zaza (MSc 2025)
  • Masixole Jojo (Honours 2025, distinction)
  • Siphelele Futhusi (Honours 2025, distinction)
  • Casey Chuma (Honours 2025)
  • Nkosinathi Ntuli (Honours 2025)
  • Vanqa Kamva (MSc 2024)
  • Nicole Oyetunji (MSc 2024, distinction)
  • Irene Nandutu (PhD 2023)
  • Avuya Deyi (MSc 2023, distinction)
  • Sydil Kupa (MSc 2023)
  • Sisipho Hamlom (MSc 2022)
  • Siphendulwe Zaza (Honours 2022, distinction)
  • Sihle Gcilitshana (Honours 2021, distinction)
  • Georgina Bianca (Honours 2021, distinction)
  • Vanqa Kamva (Honours 2020, distinction)
  • Myren Govender (Honours 2020)
  • Benjamin Strelitz (Honours 2019, distinction)

 

Selected Publications [2025, 2026]

  • Nortey, E. N. N., Asante-Koranteng, J., Atemkeng, M., Ansah-Narh, T., Mensah, D., Davis, R., & Laryea, R. A. (2026). An Optimised Greedy-Weighted Ensemble Framework for Financial Loan Default Prediction. arXiv preprint arXiv:2603.18927. Under review in Journal of Big Data
  • Niyonkuru, C., Atemkeng, M., Nguegnang, G. M., & Fadja, A. N. (2026). Balancing Performance and Fairness in Explainable AI for Anomaly Detection in Distributed Power Plants Monitoring. arXiv preprint arXiv:2603.18954. Under review in Journal of Big Data
  • Bayaola, I. K., Fendji, J. L. E. K., Yenke, B. O., Atemkeng, M., & Obagbuwa, I. C. (2026). Beyond Ad-Hoc Choices: A Two-Stage Decision Framework for UAV Energy Model Selection. Under revision in Drone.
  • M Atemkeng, S Perkins, E Seck, S Makhathini, O Smirnov, L Bester, B Hugo. Lossy Compression of Large-Scale Radio Interferometric Data. https://arxiv.org/abs/2304.07050, Under Review in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
  • Diakusala, J. A. N., Pan, Z., Kiveni, G. L., Chen, N., Bilal, H., Atemkeng, M., ... & Ravelo, B. (2026). Object Recognition Using Deep Learning‐Powered Glove With Flex and MPU Sensors Fusion. Journal of Robotics, 2026(1), 6642796.
  • Hamlomo, S., & Atemkeng, M. (2026). Clustering-based low-rank matrix approximation for multimodal medical image compression. BioData Mining.
  • Zaza, S., Atemkeng, M., Murray, T. S., Filmalter, J. D., & Cowley, P. D. (2026). Unsupervised-explainable anomaly detection in large-scale estuarine acoustic telemetry data. Ecological Informatics, 103672.
  • Banchuin, R., Noa, et al. (2026). HP-NGD Circuit Theory with Generalized Exponential Kernel Fractional Derivative Based Impedances. IEEE Access.
  • Atemkeng, M. (2025) Addressing a curriculum alignment problem in a Mathematical Programming course: insights from a PGDip (HE) graduate. Transforming Teaching in Higher Education, UJ Press
  • Ataei, P., & Atemkeng, M. (2025). Terramycelium: a reference architecture for adaptive big data systems. Journal of Big Data, 12(1), 260.
  • Fotsa-Mbogne, D. J., Nguensie-Wakponou, A. B., Nlong, J. M., Atemkeng, M., & Tchuente, M. (2025). Curvature-Based Change Detection in Road Segmentation: Ascending Hierarchical Clustering vs. K-Means. Mathematics, 13(12), 1921.
  • Leon K Mtshweni, Kshitij Thorat, Roger P Deane, Bradley S Frank, Filippo M Maccagni, Gyula I Józsa, William D Cotton, Gourab Giri, Sarah V White, Marcellin Atemkeng, Hertzog L Bester, Bernie L Fanaroff, Ian Heywood, Graham Lawrie, Thato E Manamela, Isaac Magolego, Tom Mauch, Nadeem Oozeer, Oleg Smirnov, Masacheba S Kupa  (2025). Hi gas in the rejuvenated radio galaxy PKS 2014 55. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 543(1), 285-291.
  • Nhlapho, W., Atemkeng, M., & Ndogmo, J. C. (2025). An attention-guided hybrid statistical and deep learning modeling for enhanced time series forecasting: A case study of South African telecommunication companies. Scientific African, e02950. 
  • Atemkeng, M. T., Chuma, C., Zaza, S., Nunhokee, C. D., & Smirnov, O. M. (2025). A benchmark analysis of saliency-based explainable deep learning methods for the morphological classification of radio galaxies. arXiv preprint arXiv:2502.17207. Accepted in IEEE 2025 URSI Asia-Pacific Radio Science Conference, Australia.
  • Nandutu, I., Atemkeng, M., Okouma, P., Mgqatsa, N., Fendji, J. L. E. K., & Tchakounte, F. (2025). Enhancing highway security and wildlife safety: Mitigating wildlife–vehicle collisions with deep learning and drone technology. Journal of Intelligent Systems, 34(1), 20240219.
  • Fendji, J. L. K. E., Hassana, M., Atemkeng, M. (2025). From textual web forms to audio web forms: Towards a microservices architecture that leverages natural language processing techniques. In Proceedings of the 2025 Intelligent Systems Conference (IntelliSys), 28-29 August 2025, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Springer.
  • Douanla, U. T., Fendji, J. L. K. E., Sassa, G. T., Atemkeng, M. (2025). Towards a supervision platform for community networks using big data, log files and the SNMP protocol. In Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on ICT for Intelligent Systems, New York, USA, 2025. Springer.
  • Hamlomo, S., Atemkeng, M., Brima, Y., Nunhokee, C., & Baxter, J. (2025). A systematic review of low-rank and local low-rank matrix approximation in big data medical imaging. Neural Computing and Applications, 1-56.
  • Ngueajio, M., Aryal, S., Atemkeng, M., Washington, G., & Rawat, D. (2025). Decoding Fake News and Hate Speech: A Survey of Explainable AI Techniques: A Survey of Explainable AI Techniques. ACM Computing Surveys.
  • Tchokogoué, T., Noumsi, A. V., Atemkeng, M., & Fono, L. A. (2025). Towards Precision Agriculture: A Dataset for Early Detection of Corn Leaf Pests. Data in Brief, 111394.
  • Fadja, A. N., Tagni, A. G. F., Che, S. R., & Atemkeng, M. (2025). A Dataset of Annotated African Plum Images from Cameroon for AI-Based Quality Assessment. Data in Brief, 111351.
  • Fendji, J. L. K., Donatien, D., & Atemkeng, M. (2025). Hybrid Profile based Multi-document Text Summarisation. Procedia Computer Science, 252, 862-872.
  • Atemkeng, M., Hamlomo, S., Welman, B., Oyetunji, N., Ataei, P., & Fendji, J. L. K. (2025). Ethics of Software Programming with Generative AI: Is Programming without Generative AI always radical?. arXiv preprint arXiv:2408.10554. Accepted in  Lecture Notes of the Institute for Computer Sciences, Social Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering

Last Modified: Thu, 02 Apr 2026 06:16:05 SAST