Alaa Almouiz Farog Mohammed named Google DeepMind Scholar

Equitech Futures is proud to celebrate Alaa Almouiz Farog Mohammed, a 2023 Equitech Futures Institute alumna from Sudan, who has been selected as a Google DeepMind Scholar.

This prestigious scholarship will fund Alaa for one year of graduate study in the AI for Science Master's Program at the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS) near Cape Town, South Africa. It includes tuition, travel, accommodation, and research costs. The program was founded in 2023 by a donation from Google DeepMind to support 40 scholars from across the African continent each year. The program also guarantees research opportunities and the ability to connect with Google DeepMind researchers and engineers for support.

"I am so excited for this opportunity," Alaa says. "During one of my first lectures at AIMS with Dr. Sanjoy Mahajan, we discussed probabilities and Bayesian theory. It reminded me of how Dr. Bhasi Nair shaped my way of seeing the math around us during the Equitech Futures Institute. Translating abstract mathematical ideas to understand problems in the real world was something I owe to my Equitech education."

As an Equitech Scholar in 2023, Alaa was voted by her cohort peers to win the Kevin Xu Prize, an honor which recognizes those scholars who most exemplify a community centered on curiosity and learning. At the time, her colleague Rachael Chew (Futures '23, Singapore) remarked, "Alaa is one of the sweetest people I have met. She is always ready to go the extra mile to make everyone feel seen and heard. When she responds, you know that she was really listening. I think she has embodied the idea of uplifting each other, not only in class, but outside of class. She inspires me to go the extra mile to make the people around me smile."

Alaa holds a Bachelor's in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from the University of Khartoum and a Bachelor's of Engineer in Robotics, Autonomous, and Interactive Systems from Heriot-Watt University. She is the organizer of IndabaXSudan, a five-day program containing 20 public talks and 8 technical Machine Learning workshops targeting more than 500 Sudanese attendees.