Anthony Pembere is a chemist, whose work focusses on application of artificial intelligence in material design. By applying artificial intelligence in the design of sustainable carbon-based adsorbents for environmental remediation, he aims to play a key role in pollution abatement and advancement of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), particularly SDG 3 (Good Health and Well-being), SDG 6 (Clean Water and Sanitation), SDG 11 (Sustainable Cities and Communities), SDG 13 (Climate Action), and SDG 15 (Life on Land). Traditional methods for designing carbon-based materials rely on empirical approaches that are time-consuming, costly, and often result in suboptimal materials. The rapid advances in machine learning (ML) offer powerful tools to accelerate the discovery and optimization of materials.
His work seeks to develop a comprehensive, ML-guided framework for computationally designing sustainable carbon-based adsorbents tailored to a broad range of environmental contaminants. He also seek to develop and conduct training programs for researchers, faculty, and students in East Africa to enhance their proficiency in ML techniques relevant to science. By developing a skilled and competent workforce within higher education institutions, East Africa can establish a knowledgeable talent base equipped to address environmental challenges using advanced technological tools.