Prof. Francisca Oladipo

Francisca Oladipo, is a Professor of Computer Science and current Vice-Chancellor of Thomas Adewumi University, Oko, Kwara State Nigeria. She is the Secretary-General of the Consortium of Universities in Kwara State (KU8+) and also serves as Vice-President and Secretary to the Board of VODAN a leading international network of African Scientists and researchers from universities in Africa, Europe and Asia dedicated to developing Afrocentric systems that would ensure data ownership in residence.

She previously served as pioneer Director, Quality Assurance, a member of the Governing Council– the first female elected to the Council, and the first female Head of the Department of Computer Science at the Federal University Lokoja Nigeria. She was a Consultant at the Tilburg School of Humanities and Digital Sciences of Tilburg University, Netherlands, and had served previously at Kampala International University (KIU), Uganda as the Director of Research, Innovations, and International Relations and Lecturer and Researcher, in the Department of Computer Science, Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka, Nigeria.

Francisca who is the first female Professor of Computer Science and the first Professor from Federal University Lokoja to be appointed a Vice-Chancellor, served as the Chief Technical Advisor (Kogi) on the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) between 2017 and 2022, and, Facilitator, Africa Centre of Excellence in Technology and Learning (ACETEL), National Open University of Nigeria (2022-date).

She also served as a visiting Professor at the Pan-African University Institute of Basic Sciences, Technology and Innovation, Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology, Kenya (2021-2022). Between 2020 and 2023, Francisca served as the International Projects Synergy and Support Lead, for the NUFFIC Regional and Ethiopia Projects for KIU, and Dutch Partners.

The two-part project is sponsored by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs and, is facilitated by e-learning and data sharing in the Horn of Africa to develop and implement eLearning Systems to strengthen Security and Rule of Law; Food and Nutrition, specifically in Somalia, Sudan, and South Sudan, and Northern Ethiopia under the Dutch Orange Knowledge Programme (OKP) Initiative.

She currently serves as PhD advisor at the Network for Globalization, Accessibility, Innovation and Care (GAIC), Tilburg University, Netherlands, promoting the partnership between the Africa University Network (AUN) for FAIR Open Science and European Universities. Francisca is a member of the Technology Advisory Board and a Women in Technology Fellow Initiative at Woxsen University, India and an Honorary Advisory Board Member, School of Innovation and Management, an all-women B-School established in collaboration with the esteemed G. Narayanamma Institute of Technology and Sciences College for Women based at Hyderabad.

On March 8, 2024, she received the Emerging Scholar Award (the only African) at the Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV), Valencia, Spain.

As the Executive Coordinator of the Virus Outbreak Data Africa Network (VODAN Africa), she led the initiative to give Africa a place in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic through the deployment of the only first and only successful implementation of machine-actionable FAIR Data Points in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic across Ethiopia, Kenya, Nigeria, Tunisia, Uganda, Zimbabwe, and the Netherlands.

She also led the expansion of the initiative into Tanzania, Somalia, Liberia, Burkina Faso, Rwanda, China, Indonesia, and Kazakhstan. The initiative that was applauded in the 2021 UNESCO Engineering report achieved the VODANA Minimally Viable Product (MVP) through the installation of the MVP in 88 Health Facilities in 8 African countries and received the Award of the Most Inspiring Initiative at the Leiden Science Week in May 2022. She is one of the Scientific Organizers of the highly significant ‘Road to FAIR and Equitable Science’ Workshop of the Lorentz Centre, University of Leiden in 2024.

A two-time recipient of the PyCon USA Grant, who has thrice (3X) received the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Fairness, Accountability and Transparency (FAccT) in AI Fellowship. Francisca is one of the inaugural Fellows of the Pan-Africa Scientific Research Council, and a supporting partner of the Africa Universities Network on FAIR Open Science (AUN), as well as a Grace Hopper Faculty Scholar.

She is a fellowship alumna of the Heidelberg Laureate Foundation Germany, United States Department of State Exchange Program (TechWomen), Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), the Women of Colour in Computing, Widening Natural Language Processing, Women in Machine Learning, Black in Artificial Intelligence, Women in High Performance Computing (WHPC), the 2019 Diversity and Inclusion Fellowship of the ICML, etc.

She is a registered IT practitioner and a Fellow of the Nigeria Computer Society (FNCS), and the African Scientists Institute (FASI). She was a PostDoctoral Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, an alumna of the prestigious Machine Learning Summer School, and has been trained in Machine Learning, Big Data Analytics, and Data Science at the Institute of Analytics and Data Science, University of Essex, UK, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Madrid, Spain, and the University of Oxford Continuing Education.

Francisca has won many grants and co-authored several award-winning proposals for donor-founded projects including the Google ExploreCSR Grant, Philip’s Foundation Grants, Google Rapid COVID-19 Grant, Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs Orange Knowledge Program, Carnegie African Diaspora Fellowship, Dutch Development Bank Grant for capacity Strengthening in Africa, Google ExploreCSR Grant, Tensorflow Add on Funding, Deep Learning IndabaX Hosting Grant, etc.

Francisca is a Chartered IT Practitioner, a Fellow of the Nigeria Computer Society, African Scitientists Institute, Pan-African Scientific Research Council, Women in High Performance Computing, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) etc. She is a certified Quality Assurance expert with extensive experiences in accreditation, curriculum development, internationalization and globalization in higher education, quality metrics, and so on.

In addition to developing innovative curriculum for multidisciplinary research, she is bridging the gaps between research and practice in the areas of Theoretical Computer Science, and deploying scalable solutions for emerging economies. She has published numerous papers detailing her research experiences in both local and international journals and presented research papers in several international conferences. She is also a reviewer and editorial board member of many international scientific publications.