Birhanu Shimelis Girma

Girma leads technical programming of AI-driven social robots at CMU-Africa’s robotics lab in Kigali so they understand and apply Rwandan and broader African cultural norms such as respectful open-hand gestures and elder greetings. His work on the CSSR4Africa project, including surveys of community practices and implementation on the Pepper robot for interactive public-service prototypes, was featured in Nature Africa in March 2026 and builds on his 2025 graduation and prior robotics engineering experience.