As a renowned scholar in her field, the request for her participation aligns with the IT section’s workshop goals of exposing professionals all over Nigeria to the application of new technologies. She shared with the Ignatius Ajuru University of Education the benefits and best practices of Blockchain technology to advance IT education, research, and standards.

She shared with the audience that “blockchain technology is a very secure platform for library information centers in Nigeria to adopt in implementing private and public digital library systems. The various activities that make blockchain suitable for any system interested in security and privacy range from its Block Transactions, Immutable Ledgers, Decentralized Peers, Encryption Processes, Consensus Mechanisms, and Optional Smart Contracts. Blockchain technology is a trustless environment. It makes it difficult for hackers to invade the network unless credentials are compromised. With the increasing volume of digital sensitive documents, it becomes imperative to adopt blockchain technology in their digital systems.”

Okengwu is currently on U-M campus continuing her Artificial intelligence research through our UMAPS program. She will be presenting her research, “Sentiment Analysis on Climate Change Using Deep Learning,” at the third UMAPS colloquium series event: “Ritual Dance, Artificial Intelligence, and Multimedia Subjectivities in Africa;” on November 7th at 2 in 1010 Weiser Hall. Okengwu’s presentation is about gathering textual data from social media and using computational techniques to determine the polarity of emotions people exhibit during climate change discourse, especially in the Niger Delta, Nigeria. Her intended project goal is to create awareness about climate change using the outcome of the analysis. 

Her future work plans include understanding the impact of climate change and how it affects different communities”, possibly also “this will allow us to go deeper on understanding connections between climate change and healthcare implications, such as widespread pandemics like COVID-19."

Her U-M faculty host is Rada Mihalcea, Janice M. Jenkins Collegiate Professor of Computer Science and Engineering, professor of electrical engineering and computer science, and director of the AI Lab.