Alumni Spotlight: On a path of growth and empowerment

When Akbobek Abilkaiyrkyzy graduated from MBZUAI, she had a number of options open to her, including industry, entrepreneurship, and sustainability. Her solution? Do them all. 

Arriving in Abu Dhabi from Kazakhstan as one of the University’s first batch of students, the MBZUAI alumna graduated in 2022 with a master’s in machine learning and has since applied her knowledge in a variety of different domains — not least as a member of the MBZUAI Alumni Advisory Board — getting as much experience as she can along the way. 

“One of my mentors told me to navigate life by thinking of it as collecting badges,” she says. “So, you go on one journey, do one thing, and collect the badge. You do another thing and collect the badge there. So doing a master’s degree was in pursuit of a badge, getting research skills was a badge, doing consulting work was a badge. I like to do many different things and collect many different badges.” 

But for Abilkaiyrkyzy, the journey isn’t merely about collecting badges — it’s also about making an impact along the way; an approach rooted in her MBZUAI experience and continued in her post-university career. 

AI for better mental health 

Having developed a passion for mental health during her master’s degree, Abilkaiyrkyzy’s thesis centered on developing a chatbot for mental health problem detection — designed to help people identify the mental health condition they have, as well as its severity, while combatting the stigma that is often still attached to mental health. 

Abilkaiyrkyzy collaborated with a clinical psychiatrist during this process, and after completing her thesis and publishing a paper in the IEEE journal, she developed the idea even further with the help and support of other healthcare professionals before enrolling in the MBZUAI Incubation and Entrepreneurship Center (MIEC) to take it to the next level. 

The result was WellRound — an app that collects data from your smartwatch, calendar and other sources, and uses it to help improve your mental and physical wellbeing. 

“WellRound is targeted to people who are actively invested in their mental and physical health, centralizing and analyze all the data it can collect, and giving smart, intelligent recommendations that are personalized to you,” Abilkaiyrkyzy says. 

“People have become much more aware and conscious of their health in general, and WellRound is designed to address people’s health and wellbeing in a holistic way, giving them not just information, but advice on how to make beneficial changes.” 

MIEC helped Abilkaiyrkyzy hone her idea, which she and her team presented at the MBZUAI Wellbeing Festival earlier this year. 

“I knew that I wanted to be an entrepreneur at some point, and MIEC helped me learn how to prototype, how to come up with an idea, how to shape it, do the market research, and many other steps,” she says. “I even found a team there who are equally passionate about using the power of AI for wellbeing. We’re currently looking to develop the solution further, attract investment and build the team, and then we’d like to build our own hardware.” 

Working towards sustainable societies 

Alongside her entrepreneurial endeavors, Abilkaiyrkyzy has been active in the sustainability space, both enhancing her own knowledge, and helping to create sustainable impact. 

“The University shared an opportunity with us called the WISER Program, organized by Masdar. WISER stands for Women in Sustainability, Environment and Renewable Energy, and is for women only who are early in their STEM careers and aged from 25-35 years old. I was privileged to be selected for this program and named a WISER Pioneer for 2023.” 

WISER offers workshops and networking opportunities with industry partners to help young women make their voices heard and equip them with the knowledge and skills necessary to lead meaningful change. It also gave Abilkaiyrkyzy the opportunity to travel around the world to learn about sustainability initiatives. 

“Through WISER I went to Japan to learn about the carbon neutrality initiatives in major Japanese corporations. We also had leadership and negotiation training from top professors and visited many factories and companies. I was also lucky enough to be selected for a program to learn about the agriculture sector of Morocco, where we learned about water scarcity. and how technology is helping to improve the situation.” 

Abilkaiyrkyzy explains that these experiences helped her realize that she wanted to be more involved in building solutions that contribute to sustainability goals. To help do this, she joined the Global Shapers community in Abu Dhabi — a strand of the World Economic Forum that gives young people the platform to make a positive impact on society.  

“I recently became vice curator of the Abu Dhabi hub, so I’m involved in a series of initiatives to help activate our community members. We’re doing several projects that will positively impact our society, such as financial literacy, making our community greener, and driving sustainability. 

“We have people from many different backgrounds and many diverse experiences, but we’re all committed to empowering each other and doing something positive. It’s an amazing platform and I have seen how much leadership there is in Abu Dhabi. We’re all volunteers who want to make a difference and build something meaningful.” 

Bringing expertise to industry 

What makes these activities all the more impressive is that Abilkaiyrkyzy is doing them while also working in a full-time job. Having been a senior lead automation control engineer for a leading copper mining company before joining MBZUAI, she was keen to return to industry after her master’s and accepted a job as data scientist for logistics innovation technology firm, Lyve Global.  

“Companies today are trying to keep up with AI and implement it into their day-to-day business, and Lyve Global is no exception,” she says. “We are leveraging data to help bring beneficial insights to our company and our clients, and build automated processes that optimize our routes, for example.” 

Being given several projects and initiatives to lead, Abilkaiyrkyzy admits to feeling “a little bit scared” by the new responsibility at first but explains that those worries faded away once she started the work. 

“This is my first technical AI-related role, and the imposter syndrome was there, but even if your eyes are scared, your hands still go for it. Yes, there is pressure, but I have learned to navigate through the pressure. It helps to have plenty of people on my side, and support from management. Knowing there’s help if you need it always makes things easier.” 

With all this experience under her belt, what advice would Abilkaiyrkyzy give to students considering their post-graduation options? 

“One thing I would say is don’t be super obsessed with making the right decision or best decision,” she says. “There is only the decision – you just do it and then you see the output and that gives you enough data points for a code to identify whether that was something that brought you closer to your goals or not. 

“I would also say follow your heart, but balance it with your mind, and remember that everybody has their own path and timeline. Comparison is the thief of joy, so don’t look too closely at your peers and what they are doing. You have a unique story and should follow what’s right for you.”