PITTSBURGH—Today, William Sanders, dean of the College of Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University, participated in a briefing at the United Nations. He was joined by Carnegie Mellon University Africa student Choukouriyah Arinloye. The event, “Artificial Intelligence for Accelerating Progress on the Sustainable Development Goals: Addressing Society’s Greatest Challenges,” was held as part of the 78th United Nations General Assembly and was hosted by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken. The event is co-convened by Japan, the Republic of Kenya, the Kingdom of Morocco, the Republic of Singapore, the Kingdom of Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States of America.
Carnegie Mellon University was the only academic institution that participated in the briefing. Sanders and Arinloye were joined by representatives from Amazon, Anthropic, Google, IBM, Inflection AI, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and Schmidt Futures.
The briefing was attended by foreign ministers, policymakers, academics and researchers, industry leaders from technology companies, AI startups, innovation hubs, civil society organizations working on AI policy, and international organizations. The goal of the event was to discuss how AI systems will help address society’s greatest challenges. Participants, including Sanders and Arinloye, were asked to present demonstrated concrete applications of AI that could advance progress in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals, including applications focused on health, education, food security, energy, and climate action.
During the event, Sanders presented about Carnegie Mellon University Africa (CMU-Africa). He spoke about how the College of Engineering location is building a digital future for the continent through artificial intelligence education and research partnerships. During his presentation, he highlighted the college’s Master of Science in Engineering Artificial Intelligence program and the African Engineering and Technology Network (Afretec). Afretec is a collaboration of African universities from across the continent, led by CMU-Africa. The network will build a strong knowledge creation and educational infrastructure on the continent. It will also provide a platform for its members to engage in deep collaboration that drives inclusive digital growth in Africa.
Arinloye, who is pursuing her master’s degree in information technology, spoke about her experience at CMU-Africa, the work she is doing with AI, and her future goals to use her education to improve economic growth in Africa through geointelligence. Arinloye described a research project she worked on, which investigated the potential of AI to detect flood patterns in satellite images.
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About the College of Engineering and CMU-Africa:
The College of Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University is a top-ranked engineering college that is known for our Advanced Collaboration culture in research and education. The College is well-known for working on problems of both scientific and practical importance. Our “maker” culture is ingrained in all that we do, leading to novel approaches and transformative results. Our acclaimed faculty have a focus on innovation management and engineering to yield transformative results that will drive the intellectual and economic vitality of our community, nation, and world.
CMU-Africa was established in 2011 through a partnership between Carnegie Mellon and the Government of Rwanda. CMU-Africa is the only U.S. research university offering its master’s degrees with a full-time faculty, staff, and operations in Africa. The institution is addressing the critical shortage of high-quality engineering talent required to accelerate the economic transformation of the African continent. For more information on the Engineering program in Africa, please visit: africa.engineering.cmu.edu. Follow us on Twitter at @CMUEngineering and @CMU_Africa.
