Bridging AI research and real-world impact.
HELLO, I'M
Ussen Kimanuka
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PhD holder in Electrical Engineering with a specialization in Applied AI, NLP, and Speech Processing. Former Google PhD Fellow, and OpenAI grantee.My research and work cut across Signal Processing for Speech AI, machine learning, and software development, where I collaborated effectively with diverse teams adding value to the projects I worked on. Occupying several leadership positions from startup management to academic research volunteering has helped me acquire leadership and communication skills, and a great sense of responsibility.
AI & NLP Research
Speech recognition, dialogue systems, and multilingual NLP for low-resource African languagesFull-Stack Development
End-to-end web and mobile applications with React, Next.js, Flask, Node.jsAbout Me
AI Researcher & Software Engineer
I hold a PhD in Electrical Engineering with a specialization in Applied AI from the Pan African University. My research and work cut across Natural Language Processing, Computer Vision, Signal Processing for Speech AI, machine learning, and software development, where I collaborated effectively with diverse teams adding value to the projects I worked on. I combine this research background with hands-on engineering experiences and across multiple full-stack and ML projects.
- PhD in Electrical Engineering — NLP & Speech Processing (PAU, defended Feb 2026)
- Google PhD Fellowship recipient & OpenAI Democratic Inputs to AI grantee
- Peer-reviewed publications spanning NLP, speech recognition, AI governance, and Conversational AI
- ML pipeline engineering at Google Research Africa (Vision Language Models, computer vision)
- Full-stack development with React, Next.js, Flask, Node.js, and Android
Work History
Experience
Software Engineer IV / Machine Learning Engineer
Oct 2025 – Jan 2026- •Designed and built end-to-end data processing pipelines for fine-tuning Vision Language Models, ensuring scalability in resource-constrained environments.
- •Developed and optimized backend systems for model training workflows, integrating multiple data sources and automating processing stages.
- •Delivered high-performance applications for computer vision tasks, improving plant trait extraction accuracy.
- •Collaborated with cross-functional research and engineering teams following best practices (Git, code reviews, reproducible builds).
Full-Stack Developer & R&D Engineer
Feb 2022 – Present- •Developed and maintained responsive web interfaces using React.js for ubuntu-ai.net (OpenAI-funded democratic AI platform).
- •Designed and implemented RESTful API integrations between frontend and backend services.
- •Led User Acceptance Testing (UAT) cycles, ensuring quality, accessibility, and alignment with requirements.
- •Collaborated with stakeholders to translate business needs into scalable technical solutions.
Software / ML / NLP Engineer & Consultant
Feb 2019 – PresentSelf-Employed (Freelancing)
- •Haki chatbot: voice-enabled AI platform for legal information and land rights for women in DRC (Mozilla Foundation).
- •Masakhane volunteering: dataset collection and benchmarks for 4 Congolese languages.
- •Develop and maintain mobile applications; integrate AI/ML models and APIs.
- •School management website using React and Flask.
Signal Processing Laboratory Assistant
Sep 2017 – Jan 2019- •Conducted scientific research and development for engineering and environmental problems.
- •Managed large, complex design projects for scientific research and publication.
- •Quality assurance testing; maintenance of software and hardware equipment.
Research & Academic Work
Featured Publications
Covering AI for Social Good, NLP, Signal Processing and Wireless Communications.
Inter‐Model Feature Fusion for Robust Low‐Resource Speech Recognition
Kimanuka, U., Ciira wa Maina, Büyük, O.
Applied AI Letters
A Congolese Swahili Task-Oriented Dialogue System for Addressing Humanitarian Crises
Kimanuka, U., Ciira wa Maina, Büyük, O., Masika Kassay Godelive
Engineering, Technology & Applied Science Research
Speech Recognition Datasets for Low-Resource Congolese Languages
Kimanuka, U., Ciira wa Maina, Büyük, O.
Elsevier Data in Brief
MasakhaneNews: News Topic Classification for African Languages
Adelani, D. I., Masiak, M., Azime, I. A., Alabi, J., Tonja, A. L., Mwase, C., Ogundepo, O., Kimanuka, U., et al.
Proceedings of the 13th International Joint Conference on Natural Language Processing and the 3rd Conference of the Asia-Pacific Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers)