Wits University’s Machine Intelligence and Neural Discovery (MIND) Institute in Johannesburg has notched up several big wins.
Professor Benjamin Rosman, director of MIND, has been named in the ‘Thinkers’ category of Time magazine’s Time100 AI 2025. And now Google.com has awarded $1-million in core funding to the Institute.
The Wits Mind Institute is home to some of Africa’s leading fundamental AI researchers and, it says, this landmark investment will supercharge its research and drive next-generation breakthroughs in natural and artificial intelligence.
“The Wits MIND Institute was conceived to place African researchers at the forefront of the understanding and study of intelligence – natural and artificial,” says Professor Benjamin Rosman. “Google.org’s support cements our capacity to train talent, incubate disruptive ideas, and ensure our discoveries translate into societal benefit.”
The strategic support will boost the Institute’s targeted capacity development and networking-building programmes, which centre around outcomes-driven collaboration across disciplines, and dialogue among academia, industry, policymakers and others.
The partnership aligns with Google.org’s mission to accelerate scientific discovery through external collaborations that enable real-world impact.
Since its launch in November 2024 — building on more than a decade of Wits University’s investment in postgraduate education, capacity building, and pan-African AI initiatives — the Institute has rapidly become a hub for cutting-edge research and thought leadership.
It recently launched an inaugural cohort of 34 MIND Fellows, among them various research chairs and National Research Foundation-rated researchers from all faculties and core departments at the university — a truly cross-functional group that sparks transdisciplinary engagement and research.
MIND Fellows and Chairs are already collaborating on more than 25 projects in domains from reinforcement learning to digital humanities. The MINDFund also provides targeted capacity and seed funding to novel research and is currently supporting five projects.
Researchers and stakeholders have been invited to engage with The Wits MIND Institute’s growing ecosystem by signing up here.