Microsoft Research Africa (MSR Africa) is inviting applications for the position of PhD Research Intern – NLP Researcher, based in Nairobi, Kenya. This internship presents an opportunity to be part of a globally recognized research organization that explores the intersection of artificial intelligence, human-centered design, and real-world impact in Africa. The successful candidate will contribute to an ongoing initiative under the African Health Stories project, an interdisciplinary collaboration among Microsoft Research, Stellenbosch University, the University of Pretoria, and Swansea University.
This initiative focuses on building an agentic system for cultural tailoring of multimodal content to help patients better understand how to apply health advice within their local and cultural contexts. The research aims to create a story generation tool that can produce interactive visual, oral, and text-based stories that are not only medically accurate but also culturally resonant and contextually meaningful.
This role is designed for candidates who are passionate about advancing machine learning research within a global technology ecosystem, with a particular focus on African languages, cultures, and applications. Interns at Microsoft Research work alongside some of the brightest minds in the field, engaging in research that contributes both to Microsoft’s innovation pipeline and the broader scientific community through publications and collaborations.
Overview of the Project
The African Health Stories project is a collaborative, interdisciplinary research initiative aimed at transforming how health information is communicated in Africa. Its central mission is to harness generative AI and multimodal storytelling to improve public understanding and engagement with health advice, specifically targeting individuals living with chronic conditions such as Type II Diabetes.
By integrating linguistic, visual, and oral storytelling methods, the project seeks to deliver localized narratives that align with patients’ lived experiences and socio-cultural backgrounds. The intern will have an opportunity to explore how Large Language Models (LLMs), AI agentic systems, and multimodal generation frameworks can be used to achieve these objectives. The broader aim is to make medical advice more relatable, actionable, and effective through culturally sensitive technological design.
Responsibilities
The selected PhD Research Intern will play an integral role in designing and developing research methodologies and technological solutions that enable the creation of culturally tailored content. The key responsibilities include:
- Participation in the African Health Stories Project:
The intern will actively contribute to research and development activities within the African Health Stories initiative. This includes leveraging generative AI to produce multimodal content—combining text, visuals, and audio—that is both medically accurate and culturally relevant. The focus will be on helping patients living with Type II Diabetes to make informed and sustainable lifestyle changes through accessible storytelling. - Development of Agentic Solutions:
The intern will work on designing agentic systems capable of generating, evaluating, and refining AI-produced outputs that meet both cultural and medical accuracy standards. These systems will require sophisticated approaches to prompt engineering, retrieval-augmented generation, and contextual adaptation to ensure that each output aligns with the diverse linguistic and cultural nuances of different African communities. - Contribution to Human-Centered AI (HCAI) Research:
A central part of this internship involves supporting MSR Africa’s Human-Centered AI (HCAI) research agenda. The intern will explore and experiment with methods for scalable human-centered evaluation of generative AI models, ensuring that AI systems not only produce accurate results but also respect and reflect the values, beliefs, and lived realities of their intended users. - Collaboration Across Research Disciplines:
The position involves close collaboration with a multidisciplinary team of researchers, applied scientists, designers, and machine learning engineers. The intern will contribute to cross-functional knowledge sharing, collaborative prototyping, and the co-design of experiments aimed at improving AI’s real-world applicability. Collaboration is not limited to internal Microsoft Research teams; it also extends to academic and institutional partners such as Stellenbosch University, the University of Pretoria, and Swansea University. This ensures a diverse exchange of ideas and fosters a research culture that integrates scientific rigor with societal relevance. - Publication and Dissemination of Findings:
The intern will be encouraged to publish research findings in reputable international conferences and journals. Potential publication venues include ACL, EMNLP, NeurIPS, ICLR, and ICML, among others. The research output will contribute to both the academic community and Microsoft’s broader research portfolio, advancing global understanding of culturally grounded AI systems. - Experimental Design and Implementation:
The role entails designing and conducting experiments that push the boundaries of how large-scale language models and multimodal generation techniques can be optimized for African contexts. This includes work on model fine-tuning, quantization, prompting strategies such as Chain-of-Thought or ReAct frameworks, and evaluation metrics for assessing cultural accuracy. - Cross-Team Engagement and Innovation:
The intern will be expected to engage with other research teams within Microsoft Research to foster innovation and synergy across related projects. These engagements often involve brainstorming sessions, collaborative experiments, and knowledge transfer aimed at driving forward the field of Responsible and Human-Centered AI. - Duration and Deliverables:
The internship is structured to run for a six-month period, during which the intern is expected to deliver concrete research outputs such as prototype systems, data analyses, technical reports, and potentially publishable papers. The deliverables will be developed in consultation with the supervising researchers at MSR Africa and aligned with the project’s broader goals.
Research Environment
The intern will be based at Microsoft Research Africa (Nairobi), one of the leading research labs on the continent dedicated to advancing technology innovation for global good. The lab focuses on combining AI, data science, and design research to solve pressing challenges across health, agriculture, education, and sustainable development.
Interns at MSR Africa benefit from an environment that encourages creativity, intellectual curiosity, and experimentation. They work closely with world-class scientists, engineers, and designers, gaining practical exposure to high-impact research that bridges academia and industry. The lab’s culture emphasizes mentorship, collaboration, and open exchange of ideas, ensuring that interns have access to the resources and guidance they need to excel in their research work.
Impact of the Role
This internship offers an opportunity to contribute to a transformative project that addresses one of the most critical challenges in healthcare communication—how to make medical advice more accessible and actionable across diverse cultural landscapes. The outcomes of this research have the potential to:
- Enhance health literacy through culturally informed storytelling.
- Support AI fairness and inclusivity by grounding technologies in local languages and contexts.
- Strengthen academic collaborations across continents.
- Advance the development of Responsible AI systems that respect diversity in human communication.
The intern’s work will not only advance technical innovation but also have tangible social impact, influencing how AI technologies are adapted to serve underrepresented populations.
Key Research Areas
The internship will involve exploration in several advanced domains of AI and machine learning research, including:
- Natural Language Processing (NLP) for low-resource African languages.
- Multimodal AI combining text, imagery, and audio for storytelling.
- Human-AI interaction and interpretability in content generation.
- Agentic AI systems capable of self-evaluation and feedback-driven adaptation.
- Cultural modeling and contextual learning in generative AI frameworks.
Through engagement in these areas, the intern will contribute to the next generation of AI technologies that are not only powerful but also ethically grounded and socially relevant.
Collaboration and Supervision
The intern will report to senior researchers at Microsoft Research Africa and collaborate with project leads across partner universities. Regular meetings and research discussions will provide feedback and ensure alignment with both technical and ethical research standards. Mentorship will be provided in areas such as:
- Advanced experimental methods in NLP and machine learning.
- Research writing and academic publishing.
- Responsible innovation and ethical AI design.
- Integrating user feedback into model development cycles.
Such structured mentorship ensures that the intern’s research experience is both academically enriching and professionally transformative.
Internship Duration
Duration: 6 Months
Location: Nairobi, Kenya (Fully On-site)
Travel Requirement: Up to 25% for collaborative workshops, research presentations, or field studies.
The on-site nature of the internship ensures meaningful collaboration, hands-on experimentation, and deep engagement with both local and international teams.
Conclusion
This position offers an extraordinary opportunity for doctoral-level researchers to contribute to a project that bridges AI innovation with real-world social impact in Africa. By joining Microsoft Research Africa as a PhD Research Intern – NLP Researcher, the selected candidate will engage in cutting-edge work that integrates generative AI, human-centered design, and cultural intelligence to shape the future of healthcare communication on the continent.
Applications are currently open for motivated researchers who are eager to explore how technology can be harnessed to reflect and respect Africa’s linguistic and cultural diversity.
