Career journey of Thabang Mashinini-Sekgoto

1. BSc in Computational & Applied Mathematics and Astronomy, University of the Witwatersrand (2014 - 2016). Foundations in mathematics, astrophysics & simulation. Mathematical modelling, astrophysics, simulation, and numerical methods.
2. BSc Honours in Computer Science, University of the Witwatersrand (2017). Wildfire estimation with kernel density estimators. Project: Wildfire Estimation Using Kernel Density Estimators.
3. MSc in Computer Science (Distinction), University of the Witwatersrand (2018 - 2019). Distinction · Echo State Networks for image segmentation. Thesis: Learning Level Set Method by Echo State Network for Image Segmentation. Recurrent neural network approaches for computationally efficient image segmentation.
4. Data Scientist & Software Engineer, Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) (Nov 2017 - Jan 2018). Recognised by Mail & Guardian, CSIR & DST for innovation. Predictive analytics and decision-support systems for municipalities. Recognised by Mail & Guardian, CSIR, and DST for innovation in predictive modelling.
5. Data Scientist, Business Intelligence Services - University of the Witwatersrand (Jun 2018 - Apr 2020). R2M+ annual government subsidy impact. Recommendation and analytics systems for institutional planning and student success. Built clustering-based systems generating over R2M annually in government subsidy impact.
6. Machine Learning Research Scientist, IBM Research (Apr 2020 - Nov 2021). ML on the IBM PAIRS Geospatial Platform & COVID-19 analytics. ML and geospatial analytics for environmental intelligence and climate-risk applications. Built predictive systems with TensorFlow, COVID-19 analytics dashboards, and integrated ML workflows into the IBM PAIRS Geospatial Platform.
7. Senior Data Scientist, Vodacom (Nov 2021 - Mar 2024). ~R1B annual operational savings · Vodacom Star Award. Real-time analytics and optimisation systems for national telecommunications infrastructure. Led the Smart Generator Optimisation platform contributing to ~R1B in annual operational savings. Received Vodacom Star Award.
8. Lead Data Scientist (Acting Head of Data Science), ABSA Insurance (Mar 2024 - Present). 80–90% ML pipeline latency reduction on Databricks. Leading enterprise AI, analytics, and data science initiatives. Built scalable ML pipelines on Databricks reducing latency by 80-90%. Led telematics and rewards analytics modernisation, geospatial flood-risk modelling, and AI governance frameworks.
9. PhD in Computer Science (In Progress), University of the Witwatersrand (2024 - Present). Researching distributed AI, probabilistic modelling & self-supervised learning. Distributed AI systems, probabilistic modelling, self-supervised learning, AI operationalisation, and distributed computing systems.