PhD Researcher | Agentic AI Engineer | Multilingual NLP

Oyinkansola Onwuchekwa

AI Research Engineer and Data Scientist | Hull, England

I build machine learning, multilingual NLP, retrieval-augmented generation, and multi-agent AI systems for underrepresented languages, cultural heritage, music emotion analysis, and responsible decision-making.

GitHub LinkedIn
PhD Data Science and AI, University of Hull
UKRI Member, EPSRC and NERC Peer Review Colleges
Reviewer ICLR and The Deep Learning Indaba
AFHEA / MBCS Teaching and professional recognition

Research

Cross-cultural language technologies, responsible AI, and music emotion modelling

PhD in Data Science and AI

University of Hull | 2023 - present

Thesis research explores cross-cultural musical elements, emotional expression, and genre characteristics in contemporary global music lyrics using NLP and deep learning. Awarded a fully funded Faculty of Science and Engineering PhD Scholarship in Data Science.

Low-Resource Emotion Recognition

Developing multilingual emotion recognition pipelines for African languages, with attention to class imbalance, code-mixed text, tokenisation, cross-lingual embedding alignment, and responsible model evaluation.

Responsible Cultural AI

Contributing to British Academy ODA and UNESCO-linked work on AI literacy, intangible cultural heritage, data governance, digital visibility, and community-led frameworks for cultural data use.

Agentic Research Workflows

Building LangGraph-based multi-agent systems for systematic literature review tasks, including protocol generation, screening, evidence synthesis, structured JSON/CSV outputs, and human review checkpoints.

Publications and Presentations

Co-author and presenter on locally responsible AI frameworks for cultural heritage governance, with additional work in persuasion detection, multilingual NLP, invited talks, and public engagement.

Experience

Graduate Teaching Assistant and PhD Researcher

University of Hull

Develop and evaluate machine learning, NLP, and deep learning pipelines for multilingual emotion modelling. Teach machine learning, NLP, and deep learning laboratory sessions to 150+ MSc students, supporting Python, model development, and applied AI workflows.

Sep 2023 - present

AI Research Engineer

SAGE-AI, University of Hull

Designed components of a LangGraph-based multi-agent AI system for systematic literature review workflows, including protocol generation, screening, evidence synthesis, auditability, and reproducible structured outputs.

Jun 2026 - Jul 2026

Research Contributor

British Academy ODA Grant and UNESCO Capacity Building

Developed and refined responsible AI, digital literacy, and cultural data governance materials for intangible cultural heritage practitioners. Built Python and Hugging Face data processing workflows and contributed to facilitator-ready training materials for international partners.

Nov 2024 - Apr 2026

Data Analyst and Social Researcher

FareShare UK, Goodwin Development Trust

Analysed programme and operational datasets with Python to evaluate food redistribution impact, improve reporting quality, and support evidence-based service decisions. Awarded Outstanding Achievement Intern Award.

Feb 2023 - May 2023

Projects

Selected public and research-facing work

Low-Resource NLP Toolkit

A public Python package for African language pre-processing, emotion-label mapping, evaluation, and dialect/language routing.

View repository

Poetry Emotion Deep Learning

Emotion analysis for English poetry with NRC lexicons, deterministic train/validation/test splits, supervised baselines, and reproducible metrics.

View repository

Dimensional ABSA Research

Multilingual NLP research for predicting how people feel about specific aspects in text, using valence-arousal scores for finer-grained sentiment beyond positive or negative labels.

View repository

Service and Speaking

Academic and Professional Service

  • UKRI Member, EPSRC and NERC Peer Review Colleges
  • Reviewer, International Conference on Learning Representations
  • Reviewer, The Deep Learning Indaba
  • Associate Fellow, Advance HE
  • Professional Member, BCS - The Chartered Institute for IT

Selected Talks and Engagements

  • Panel Speaker, 6th European Chatbot and Conversational AI Summit
  • Co-author and Presenter, Digital Humanities 2025, Lisbon
  • Invited Speaker, PyCon Lithuania 2025
  • Lead Organiser and Speaker, Towards Transparent and Responsible AI Conference
  • Invited Speaker, Pint of Science UK, Hull
  • Featured Contributor, BBC News Interview for National AI Day

Community and Mentoring

Volunteer academic support tutor with IntoUniversity Hull East, research mentor through University of Hull and Nuffield Research Placements, founder of Tech Help Group, and community contributor with Hull Afro-Caribbean Association.

Skills

Python PyTorch TensorFlow Hugging Face LangChain LangGraph RAG Docker Azure Git

AI and NLP

Multilingual NLP, low-resource language processing, emotion classification, LLM fine-tuning, retrieval-augmented generation, agentic AI, bias and fairness metrics, and model evaluation.

Data and Engineering

Data pipelines with pandas and NumPy, scikit-learn, Bash, structured outputs, reproducible documentation, and experiment-ready Python tooling.

Languages

English and Yoruba fluency, intermediate Spanish, and basic French, with research interests in multilingual and cross-cultural language technologies.

Education

University of Hull: PhD in Data Science and AI, 2023 - present; MSc Artificial Intelligence and Data Science, Distinction, 2022 - 2023.

University of Lagos: BSc Geophysics, Second Class Upper, 2015 - 2020.