Dr. Joseph Sevilla is currently Director of @iLabAfrica, a Research and Innovation Centre at Strathmore University (Nairobi, Kenya). He is also the Director of @iBizAfrica, a business incubator at Strathmore. He graduated as an Industrial Engineer (Universidad del País Vasco, Spain, 1980) and holds an MSc in Computer Science (University College London, UK, 1995) and a PhD in BioInformatics (Tecnun, Universidad de Navarra, Spain, 2005).
As a member of several committees formed by the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Research, Technical Training and Technology, the Ministry of Telecommunications, the Commission of Higher Education and the Kenyan ICT Board, he has advised on issues like the drafting of national policies in ICT, ICT and Education, Cybersecurity, development of National CS/IT Syllabus for secondary and university education, and the adoption of a National ICT Strategy. He has also acted as an advisor to the Directorate of Industrial Training in issues related to IT training. He has been an active member of the “East African Internet Association” and the “Computer Society of Kenya” where he has been a member of the Executive Board and the Education Committee respectively. He is currently Chairman of the “Description and Processing Languages Technical Committee” of the Kenya Bureau of Standards (KEBS). Since 2011, he has also served as a member of the Innovation Board at Safaricom (K) Ltd. In February 2013, he was appointed member of the Advisory Council for the IBM Innovation & Client Centre in Nairobi.
In 1991 he spear-headed the creation of the Information Technology Centre (ICT) at Strathmore and served as its first Director until October 2002. He has been a member of the Management Board of Strathmore University for over 20 years, Dean of the Faculty of Information Technology and Deputy Vice-Chancellor for Research and Quality Assurance.
Together with representatives from other local universities, he participated in the creation of the Kenya National Educational Network (KENET). Recently, he has been actively involved in the promotion of Integrated Management Systems for Universities based on FOSS technologies within the region, holding workshops in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, Ghana and Malawi.
While in Strathmore he has taught a variety of courses related to ICT and Management such as Web Technologies, IT Network Security and Cryptography, Operations Research and Managerial Decision Analysis as well as directed many research projects both at undergraduate and post-graduate level. Dr. Sevilla has been involved in FOSS education since the mid 90’s and has actively promoted the use of FOSS applications in institutions of Higher Learning.
Dr.Sevilla’s research interests cover Mobile Technologies, Cybersecurity, ICT in Education and Development, Entrepreneurship and Business Incubators, Managerial Decision Modelling, Internet Governance, eLearning, Bioinformatics and FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) applications.
In 2008, Dr.Sevilla was appointed External Examiner for Undergraduate Courses at the Faculty of Informatics of the University of Nairobi and has also served as External Moderator for MSc Projects at Kenyatta University and Jomo Kenyatta University.
Since 2008, Dr. Sevilla has been actively involved in the promotion of mobile application development and personally mentored a number of promising young local entrepreneurs.
In January 2011, Dr.Sevilla founded @iLabAfrica as a Research Institute under the Faculty of Information Technology at Strathmore University. The Institute actively promotes Research, Innovation, Product Development and Entrepreneurship; it also provides incubation facilities to local entrepreneurs and is actively involved in ICT Policy. Currently, @iLabAfrica brings together some 60 full-time researchers and its various activities have a wide reach within the East Africa region.