Community & connectivity, around the globe

Before coming to CMU-Africa, Mike Mwanje (MSIT '25) had a problem to solve. Placing high-quality monitors for air pollution across Africa is expensive. The company AirQo, where Mwanje worked as a DevOps engineer, creates alternatives that are more affordable, but less accurate than traditional monitors. Mwanje's mission was to figure out how to build the best possible models from the data extracted from AirQo's cost-effective monitors.

To better learn how to tackle this challenge, Mwanje enrolled in Carnegie Mellon University Africa's Master of Science in Information Technology program.

At CMU-Africa, Mwanje bolstered his skills working with data, distributed networks, and distributed machine learning techniques by researching ways to improve computer networks' performance with his supervisor João Barros, associate director and research professor at CMU-Africa, and co-supervisor Theophilus Benson, professor of electrical and computer engineering. Mwanje was also a member of CMU-Africa's software engineering club, where he helped plan events, inform students about tech resources available at CMU-Africa, and host guest speakers.

Then, excited by the prospect of meeting and studying under more of CMU's faculty working on his research interests, Mwanje came to Pittsburgh for his last semester through CMU-Africa's student exchange program.

He had already learned a bit about the CMU-Pittsburgh campus from CMU alumnus and CMU-Africa adjunct professor Howdy Pierce while taking one of his courses at CMU-Africa. Upon Mwanje's arrival in Pittsburgh, Jennifer Spirer, director of graduate affairs, showed him and the rest of the exchange program cohort around some of its iconic highlights such as the fence and the statue of Scotty, CMU's mascot, in Merson Courtyard. Embracing a Pittsburgh winter even colder than usual, Mwanje also celebrated the start of the program with the other exchange students by going ice skating in Schenley Park.

Now settled in Pittsburgh, Mwanje is taking courses he’s found to be challenging but beneficial, like advanced cloud computing and How to Write Fast Code II. He is also a teaching assistant for cloud computing, a subject he studied remotely last spring via the online course offered across CMU’s global locations. He's taking advantage of the opportunity to help teach it in person now, and is looking forward to the cupcake party and retreat at the end of the semester.

Outside academics, Mwanje plans to explore fun opportunities in the city and beyond during the rest of his time in Pittsburgh. He's excited for warm-weather activities, like taking a quick weekend trip to New York City and attending CMU's Spring Carnival in April.

During the first two months of the exchange program, the global nature of CMU's Pittsburgh campus stood out to Mwanje. "I've met students from the UK, Singapore, Germany," he says. The Pittsburgh campus is also very large and spread out compared to CMU-Africa's, he found.

After graduating, Mwanje plans to spend some time continuing research in either his home country of Uganda or in Rwanda, and then apply for Ph.D. programs, through which he hopes to conduct further research related to distributed systems. He’ll be looking into strong tech programs all around the world, from CMU-Pittsburgh to European universities.

For students thinking of participating in CMU-Africa's exchange program, Mwanje advises planning the experience well in advance to maximize the time you can dedicate to both academic and extracurricular activities, because once you arrive in Pittsburgh, it flies by. "You blink and your time here is over," he says.

He also recommends taking advantage of the community offered by other students on the exchange program and getting to know them well.

"You are all going through the same experience—you are all in it together."