Etienne Vos

Dr. Etienne Vos completed his undergraduate studies in physics, mathematics and applied mathematics at the North-West University in Potchefstroom, South Africa, followed by M.Sc. and Ph.D degrees at the same institution with a focus on heliospheric physics and the modelling of cosmic-ray modulation. He became a post-doctoral fellow at the South African Astronomical Observatory in 2016, working alongside researchers and data scientists at the Square Kilometer Array (SKA).

In 2018 Dr. Vos joined IBM Research Africa as a research scientist in Johannesburg, South Africa. During his time at IBM Research he has worked on various machine learning projects, ranging from a collaboration with the SKA to mitigate radio-frequency interference (RFI) to improving seasonal and S2S (seasonal to sub-seasonal) forecasting of temperature and precipitation for partners in aerospace and heavy equipment industries. He also worked on natural language processing for healthcare to help address backlogs in cancer pathology reports. More recently, Dr. Vos worked on a project that leveraged IBM's foundation models for Earth Observation to estimate land surface temperature (LST) maps as an indicator for heat hazard in urban environments, which formed part of the HE2AT Center - an externally funded project consisting of a consortium of partners from institutions throughout Africa with the goal of investigating and mitigating the adverse impacts of extreme heat on health.

As a research manager, Dr. Vos leads a team of researchers that are working on topics such as biodiversity, electric power grids, heat-hazard mapping, and more, all of which leverage and extend IBM's foundation model technologies. He also serves on the computer science academic advisory board at the University of the Free State.