Your questions, answered.

The SPARK Academy is designed to train a new generation of African AI experts in medical imaging who can train others. The programme includes a foundation training block, a hackathon, and a team practicum.

The SPARK Academy is unique for its emphasis on AI-based diagnostic capacity building and collaborative methods, with the broader goal of building an interdisciplinary network of researchers and teachers across Africa.

Teams will be formed by randomly grouping participants from different parts of Africa across disciplines.

Participants within the same group will work together (collective intelligence) to complete exercises or assignments and develop an AI-based segmentation model with the aim of winning the MICCAI BraTS Challenges.

Yes. Mentors are a SPARK role, and your team's mentors appear under "Who supports your team" on your team's page in the LMS, alongside your TA. They can see your team project and what the team hands in, and give written feedback on any milestone, which your team sees. Mentors give feedback only; scoring is done by your TA.

No. Given the limited training resources, The SPARK Academy is available to individuals who are currently studying or practicing at an African university, college, or institution.

Intermediate to advanced skills level is encouraged.

Yes, you will require access to a laptop or desktop to participate. We will provide cloud computing services for model development and evaluation.

The SPARK Academy is completely free for students to attend. There are no costs or fees associated with accessing the programme or its resources. Students can take advantage of all the features of the SPARK Academy without any financial burden.

All live training activities will be held in the East Africa Time zone (GMT +3). In the LMS, session times and deadlines are shown in your own timezone, which you can change in Settings.

The amount of time spent on each block varies depending on the student's prior background knowledge, skill and learning style. Each week of the Foundation block should take no more than 12 hours to complete including weekend tutorials. The Hackathon is a 9-hour daily activity with group assignments designed to be completed within this time. Team Practicum block is designed to take no more than 20 hours per week to complete, including weekend tutorials.

Yes. The Hackathon is a week of in-person and online sessions, and being able to attend the on-site days is one of the eligibility criteria. Attendance is recorded in the LMS: after each session that counts you mark "I attended", and your team's TA confirms it. Hackathon participation is worth 10 of your certification points: 6 for attending the sessions that count and 4 for your team handing in its final Hackathon deliverable on time. The Hackathon guide in the LMS explains the details.

The first time, with your application email and one of your names as a temporary password; we then email you a code to confirm it is you, and you choose your own password. After that you can also link a Google account with the same email and sign in with Google. Staff who can see other people's work, such as TAs, also confirm each sign-in with a second step from an authenticator app.

Tell your team coordinator. They can excuse up to two sessions per phase for you (one in the Hackathon), with a reason you and your TA can see; an excused session counts neither for nor against you. If you are the coordinator, your TA decides instead.

Assignments set up for it open your own copy of the starter in Google Colab with one click, and you save back to GitHub from Colab. Linking a Kaggle account is not available yet.

Yes. Participants in the SPARK Academy hackathon will receive a certificate of participation, recognizing their efforts in the event. In addition, participants who actively contribute to their pods' participation in the MICCAI BraTS Challenges will receive a certificate of completion. This certificate acknowledges the individual's hard work and dedication towards their team's success. SPARK certification is worked out from 100 points across the programme: the Foundation phase (25: weekly quizzes, attendance at the weekly live sessions, and team projects), the Hackathon (20: quizzes, and taking part in its sessions and your team's final submission), the Practicum (40: attendance at its weekly sessions, and your team's deliverable), individual assignments (10) and one mini-challenge (5, for taking part). Your score qualifies with 70 points or more. Nothing counts as zero before it has been marked or its deadline has passed, and anything that closed before you joined is left out. To be certified you also complete your cohort's completion requirements, such as the post-training survey and pushing your final code to GitHub; the Certification page in the LMS shows which are done.

For any additional inquiries, please feel free to send us an email at spark@mailab.io.