LONDON, 7th October: Last week, the Google Developers Expert (GDE) community announced that two of our colleagues at InstaDeep, Rihab Gorsane and Youssef Ben Dhieb, have qualified as Machine Learning experts for the network! The exclusive community only has 130 ML experts world-wide highlighting the stringent criteria the candidates must meet and fulfil.
Historic achievement
The announcement made on 1st October included a truly memorable achievement; Rihab is the first female to become an ML Google DevExpert across Africa and the MENA region! Rihab joined InstaDeep in February 2018 as an intern during her graduation thesis where she applied Deep Neuroevolution to hard Deep RL tasks. After she graduated from the National School of Computer Sciences of Tunisia (ENSI) in June 2018, she joined the company full time.
Being the first female holding the title on her continent, Rihab hopes to inspire others to follow in her footsteps.
“I am super excited to join the program and look forward to working closely with the ML GDE community. I have always had a dream of teaching and sharing what I’ve learned — as such, earning the right to pursue this dream is now not just a responsibility but an incentive to keep the momentum alive. I hope my joining the program will act as inspirations for others, especially women on the continent. The GDE community is a tremendous opportunity to show that we, as Tunisians, as Africains, can rise to the challenges and meet our objectives,” says Rihab.
Empowering women
For InstaDeep, the news is genuinely joyous.
“We are delighted for both Rihab and Youssef on this recognition. It is amazing to see the dedication and skillsets we see every day get global recognition by an impressive body such as Google. It underlines that with intellectual curiosity and hard work, there is no limit to how far you can get, and it is also evidence of the incredible talent we have in Tunisia and across Africa. Additionally, we are delighted with Rihab being the first women qualifying as an ML GDE. This is a nod towards InstaDeep’s focus on empowering women, a strong focus internally reflected in our executive committee which is maturely female”, says Karim Beguir, CEO of InstaDeep.
Talent and commitment
Of the 130 Google ML Developer Experts world-wide, we count four employees at InstaDeep who’s now part of this exclusive group following the two new additions. At InstaDeep, part of our strategy is to support and nurture talent and help people grow into mature field experts. The approach was evident last month when we hosted the biggest AI Hackathon across Africa and MENA attracting young and incredibly talented people from more than 20 different countries. We look forward to continuing our commitment to the community and help young people embark on an incredible career within ML and AI.
Youssef Ben Dhieb presenting at an event.
