News — science

Nashlie Sephus is on a mission to build a tech hub in downtown Jackson, Mississippi, to train the next generation in technology. Downtown Jackson is not known for its technology prowess but Sephus wants to put the community on the map of technology hubs in America.

She is building a $25-million Jackson Tech District out of 12 abandoned acres of vacant lots and ramshackle buildings in downtown Jackson. “My goal is to turn this space into a self-sustaining village where people can live, work, play, and eat,” Sephus tells Inc.

The plan includes developing seven of the abandoned buildings within five years and the redevelopment will include a maker’s space, an electronics lab, a photography studio, apartments, restaurants, a grocery store as well as an innovation center. 

The techpreneur works at Amazon as an applied science manager for its artificial intelligence initiative. Before joining Amazon, she was the chief technology officer of the startup firm Partpic, a visual recognition technology.

Partpic was sold to Amazon in 2016 and in 2018, Sephus launched her own company called Bean Path. The firm is an incubator and technology consulting nonprofit, Sephus says, and claims to have helped over 400 locals businesses and individuals with their technology needs.

She founded Bean Path after she watched members of her team get laid off during an internship at Delphi Technologies in Indiana. That was when she decided to be her own boss.

The idea to build a tech hub occurred to Sephus in 2018 when she was looking for an office space for Bean Path. According to Inc., her search for an office space focused on the downtown Jackson area, a once booming business community for Black businesses. 

“It’s clear that people don’t expect anything good to come from Jackson,” she says. “So it’s up to us to build something for our hometown, something for the people coming behind us.”

She adds: “It had never occurred to me, even though I had sold a company to Amazon and was working with some of the top people at Amazon and having led a whole startup, started our own nonprofit. It just never occurred to me that I, a young Black female, could buy a building in downtown Jackson, Mississippi.”

Her vision to build a tech hub in downtown Jackson has resonated with some investors and city officials, including her superiors at Amazon. One of such investors is Toni Cooley, whom Sephus once provided tech help.

Contrary to her fears, Amazon has also offered a helping hand through its Amazon Future Engineer program, which provides scholarships and instruction for teachers interested in improving their tech skills.

Raising money to finance her project has been one of Sephus’ challenges. In fact, less than 10% of Black businesses get access to venture funding. She has sunk $500,000 of her savings into the project, in addition to funds she raised from friends and families amounting to some $150,000. 

She intends to raise additional cash through crowdfunding, grants and private sources. The tech hub project will generate funds through rentals and membership fees, she says.

Sephus obtained her first degree in computer engineering at Mississippi State University. She subsequently earned a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in computer engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta.

Nashlie Sephus is on a mission to build a tech hub in downtown Jackson, Mississippi, to train the next generation in technology. Downtown Jackson is not known for its technology prowess but Sephus wants to put the community on the map of technology hubs in America.

She is building a $25-million Jackson Tech District out of 12 abandoned acres of vacant lots and ramshackle buildings in downtown Jackson. “My goal is to turn this space into a self-sustaining village where people can live, work, play, and eat,” Sephus tells Inc.

The plan includes developing seven of the abandoned buildings within five years and the redevelopment will include a maker’s space, an electronics lab, a photography studio, apartments, restaurants, a grocery store as well as an innovation center. 

The techpreneur works at Amazon as an applied science manager for its artificial intelligence initiative. Before joining Amazon, she was the chief technology officer of the startup firm Partpic, a visual recognition technology.

Partpic was sold to Amazon in 2016 and in 2018, Sephus launched her own company called Bean Path. The firm is an incubator and technology consulting nonprofit, Sephus says, and claims to have helped over 400 locals businesses and individuals with their technology needs.

She founded Bean Path after she watched members of her team get laid off during an internship at Delphi Technologies in Indiana. That was when she decided to be her own boss.

The idea to build a tech hub occurred to Sephus in 2018 when she was looking for an office space for Bean Path. According to Inc., her search for an office space focused on the downtown Jackson area, a once booming business community for Black businesses. 

“It’s clear that people don’t expect anything good to come from Jackson,” she says. “So it’s up to us to build something for our hometown, something for the people coming behind us.”

She adds: “It had never occurred to me, even though I had sold a company to Amazon and was working with some of the top people at Amazon and having led a whole startup, started our own nonprofit. It just never occurred to me that I, a young Black female, could buy a building in downtown Jackson, Mississippi.”

Her vision to build a tech hub in downtown Jackson has resonated with some investors and city officials, including her superiors at Amazon. One of such investors is Toni Cooley, whom Sephus once provided tech help.

Contrary to her fears, Amazon has also offered a helping hand through its Amazon Future Engineer program, which provides scholarships and instruction for teachers interested in improving their tech skills.

Raising money to finance her project has been one of Sephus’ challenges. In fact, less than 10% of Black businesses get access to venture funding. She has sunk $500,000 of her savings into the project, in addition to funds she raised from friends and families amounting to some $150,000. 

She intends to raise additional cash through crowdfunding, grants and private sources. The tech hub project will generate funds through rentals and membership fees, she says.

Sephus obtained her first degree in computer engineering at Mississippi State University. She subsequently earned a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in computer engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta.

Nigerian-British scientist Dr. Maggie Aderin-Pocock won the 2020 William Thomson, Lord Kelvin Medal and Prize for her “exceptional services to science education and physics communication” this October, according to the Institute of Physics. This made her the first Black woman to win a gold medal in the award’s history. Aderin-Pocock was diagnosed with dyslexia at the age of eight but she never let go of her dream to be a scientist and worked to see it to fruition.

“Imagine a dyslexic from London meeting the queen of England. It’s mind-boggling stuff, but that shows how much potential you have.” These were the words of the renowned physics scientist when she was honored as a Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (MBE) in 2009 for her work as a science communicator, breaking down complex scientific issues into simple information that everyone can understand, and for her outreach to young people.

According to BOTWC, the celebrated scientist was also awarded a Science and Technology Facilities Council Science in Society Fellowship and also earned the title of president-elect of the British Science Association. 

She is an author of two popular science books called “Dr. Maggie’s Grand Tour of the Solar System” and “The Sky at Night: book of the Moon – A Guide to Our Closest Neighbour.”

Her outstanding work to get more children and women into the sciences cannot go unnoticed. Aderin-Pocock has interacted with over 100,000 young people from diverse backgrounds teaching them the simplest ways to understand physics space research and physics engagement in general.

She did not always have it easy in school because of her dyslexia. She moved between 13 different schools before age 18. It was her passion for science that opened doors for her.

“I was lucky because I got inspired by science, and I had an aptitude for it,” she told The Yale Center for Dyslexia and Creativity.

“Because science was an interest and a passion, I started reading about the subject.  I was reading about it in school and I was reading about it at home. Suddenly my marks kept going up and up and up and I was at the top of the class.”

Her father wanted her to be a doctor, but Aderin-Pocock gravitated towards physics. To her, “physics is the study of everything.” She is a more “hands-on” scientist and as a teenager, she made her first telescope to help her get closer to the stars she has loved since she was little.

“For me this was the first instrument I made, and it was fantastic because I made it with my own hands, and it got me closer to the stars I loved.”

Aderin-Pocock graduated from the Imperial College of London with a bachelor’s degree in Physics and in 1994, she graduated from the same school with a PhD in the Department of Mechanical Engineering.

The kind of support she received from her father is the same kind of energy and support Aderin-Pocock gives to her mentees. She is particular about getting more women and people from ethnic minorities into science.

The STEM advocate has worked on several documentaries and has been presenting a documentary on autonomy for BBC, The Sky at Night, since 2013. She has made it her life’s mission to teach young people about the importance of scientific research by making her work comprehensible and entertaining.

Growing up, many of us had childhood ambitions but some of them changed along the way. That is not the case with Fadji Zaouna Maina, the first Nigerien scientist to work for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). She has had ambitions of alleviating water problems in her hometown since age 10. Now, she gets to tackle the world’s water crises with data from NASA.

The 29-year-old hydrologist from Zinder, Niger, joined NASA on August 27, amid congratulatory messages from Niger’s president and first lady and other high-profile members of her community. Nigerien President Mahamadou Issoufou referred to her as “a national pride, and a role model for the youth of Niger”.

Her response to the president was befitting and it summarised her entire journey. “I pushed the boundaries, I made it possible and I made a whole country proud,” she said. “The chances for a girl like me, born and raised in Zinder (Niger), to become a scientist at a well-known institution like NASA are almost zero.”

She acknowledges the fact that the water crisis in Niger is deteriorating due to climate change. As a girl child in Zinder, having tap water in her home gave her an edge over other children, especially girls who had to go in search of water from the lake or buy from neighbors.

“People think that the boys should go to school or go to work and the girls should find water and come back [to do] cooking and cleaning,” Maina told Share America in an interview in September.

“[Girls] don’t have time to go to school,” she said. “Girls’ education is one more problem that comes from climate change — I have seen that.”

This situation fuels her ambition to succeed and she is giving it her all.

“I have a responsibility on my shoulders because I believe I need to show the face of my country,” Maina said. “It’s like changing the image of Nigeriens and changing the image of the women generally.”

Maina, at age 16, completed her secondary education, having been skipped several times ahead of her peers. She has been an advocate for education and girl child empowerment since she was a teenager, and, at one point, served as a junior deputy in Niger’s National Youth Assembly.

Maina went to The University of Fes in Morocco to pursue a degree in geological engineering. She then proceeded to the University of Strasbourg for her master’s in engineering and environmental sciences.

In 2016, she earned her Ph.D. in Hydrology from the University of Strasbourg, a field she chose in order “to participate in improving the conditions of access to drinking water in Niger,” according to The Africa report.

On a quest to find tangible solutions to the global water crisis, Maina worked in highly acclaimed laboratories such as the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA) before joining the Energy Geosciences Division of the University of Berkeley in the United States.

It was her work at Berkeley that caught the attention of Forbes, earning her a spot on the Forbes’ 30 Under 30 2020 Science.

Later, she saw a job opening online at NASA and went for it. Today, she works as a computational hydrologist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center where she uses mathematical models and remote-sensing products to study the impact of climate change on water, according to the Nigerien US embassy.

“I will try to better understand the water cycle and the evolution of water resources in the context of climate change by using mathematical models and data from NASA satellites,” Maina explained.

She continues to support girl child education and the emancipation of women in Niger. The young female scientist also advises young girls who aspire to be like her to keep pushing.

“I will say to them to not give up to keep going because everyone would think people from Niger, or a young girl from Niger, would not be able to do this. But just believe in yourself and find an environment that will support you,” she told.

President Mokgweetsi Masisi on Friday announced the launch of free WiFi hotspots in the capital Gaborone, noting that information and communications technology (ICT) can help address some development challenges.

“It is against this background that the government deems it necessary that all citizens should have access to the Internet so that the ideal of leaving no one behind as envisioned by the sustainable development goals is realized,” said Masisi.

He emphasized the use of the Internet, which has become a daily necessity in the lives of many people and organizations alike as they use it for business transactions and networking.

The president said his administration is committed to the automation of some services, which include the payment of old-age pensions, utility bills, fines, e-health, e-agriculture and all forms of commerce.

In addition, Masisi highlighted how ICT can be used to stimulate economic growth and add jobs during the country’s 11th National Development Plan.

“Therefore, innovation and creativity will be the bedrock of economic diversification in our country,” he said