Sylvia Imanirakiza Awarded Schlumberger Foundation’s Faculty for the Future Fellowship
Imanirakiza joins a global community of women researchers working to advance scientific innovation, opportunity, and sustainable development.
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Sylvia Imanirakiza, a PhD student in the Manning College of Information and Computer Sciences (CICS), has received the Schlumberger Foundation’s Faculty for the Future fellowship, an international award that supports women pursuing advanced research in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM).
Awarded by the Schlumberger Foundation, an independent nonprofit organization focused on STEM education, the fellowship is open to women from eligible low- and middle-income countries pursuing PhD or postdoctoral study in STEM fields abroad.
The program recognizes academic excellence, leadership, and a commitment to using science and technology for broader socio-economic development. Applicants are also evaluated on the relevance of their research to their home country and evidence of intent to return. Since its launch in 2004, it has supported over 900 women from 95 countries.
Imanirakiza’s selection places her among a global community of scholars whose work is helping address urgent challenges across the United Nations’ 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), from health and biodiversity to infrastructure, materials, and equitable development.
The award comes with financial support for Imanirakiza’s academic studies and research, which focuses on the development and application of machine learning methods to infer unknown structural attributes, quality indicators, and inequity patterns within critical infrastructure. Imanirakiza conducts this research by repurposing ubiquitous technologies such as digital cameras as low-cost measurement tools and by drawing on publicly available urban data.
Her work is designed to be scalable and accessible, particularly for under-resourced settings where traditional monitoring infrastructure is limited or absent. It is also intended for policymakers, surfacing the lived experiences of communities underserved by existing infrastructure and helping to make evidence-based planning actionable.
Imanirakiza’s research directly advances three of the United Nations' SDGs. It supports SDG 7 (Affordable and Clean Energy) by improving grid monitoring to support renewable energy integration and universal energy access; SDG 9 (Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure) by developing low-cost, scalable tools; and SDG 11 (Sustainable Cities and Communities) by mapping infrastructure inequities to enable more equitable urban planning.
Imanirakiza said that, beyond the generous financial support from the Schlumberger Foundation, the fellowship connects her with a community of scientists and affirms both the importance of the issues her research tackles and her role in addressing them.
"Growing up in Uganda, I witnessed the adverse effects of unreliable electricity and inadequate infrastructure provisioning and operation,” she said. “I hope my work helps give policymakers and utilities the tools to understand people's lived experiences so that infrastructure planning becomes more equitable and context aware.”
A self-described “STEMinist,” Imanirakiza said she carries a deeper conviction about the importance of lifting others up.
“I hope to be the support for others that I was/am fortunate enough to receive, to make this mountain a little taller, so the women coming after me can see farther," she said.
Imanirakiza grew up in Uganda and earned a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering with first class honors in 2023 from Makerere University. Her undergraduate work spanned power systems, energy systems, and signal processing, and included research in the Marconi Research and Innovations Laboratory where she contributed to machine learning projects in medical imaging. Her senior thesis, developed in collaboration with Uganda's national electric utility, focused on planning the electric distribution grid for Mbarara City, strengthening her commitment to infrastructure equity and evidence-based policymaking.
She joined the University of Massachusetts Amherst in Fall 2023 to pursue her PhD in computer science, where she is advised by Professor Jay Taneja in the Systems Towards Infrastructure Measurement and Analytics (STIMA) Laboratory. Beyond her research, she has mentored undergraduate students through UMass's Early Research Scholars Program and the Institute for Diversity Sciences, and previously served as youth coordinator for the Women in Renewable Energy Association Uganda. She currently serves as vice president of the African Graduate and Scholars Association at UMass Amherst, coordinating programs that support over 150 African scholars on campus.