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A new approach has been agreed upon to help improve the efficiency of the biostats services in the Faculty.
There is a biostatistics proposal screening tool, which should be used by requesting students and staff to help improve the quality of their proposals before submitting for biostats support. In addition to the screening tool there is a biostatistics support application form which should be submitted together with the proposal.
The schools' representatives will assist with screening the proposals and ensure that they are in good standing for biostatistics services, which will be provided by Prof Alfred Musekiwa, Dr Kuhlula Maluleke and Dr Victoria Oyekunle.
Each School has their respective school representative. These are the people who should be receiving the biostatistics requests at School level, screening and submitting the satisfactory proposals or requests to the respective biostatistician. Below are details of school-level biostatistics representatives:
Biostatistics Support Wednesdays To help minimise the delays in the completion of research projects that require biostatistics support, we would like to extend an invitation to all Faculty of Health Sciences (FHS) students and staff to visit our biostatistics support Wednesdays for 30-minute one meetings with one of the Faculty’s Biostatisticians. Researchers and Postgraduate students are encouraged to make use of this service at different stages of their research projects:
These services will be made available through the Faculty of Health Science’s resident biostatisticians.
Stata License To download and install Stata, please follow the the link: Stata Request
Webinars
Attachments
Please see below the bios of the Biostatisticians, School Screeners and external collaborators: |
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Biostatistician  |
Biostatistician
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Prof Alfred Musekiwa HW Snyman Building South Room 5-10 [email protected]Professor Alfred Musekiwa is an associate professor and Head of the Division of Health Measurement Sciences in the School of Health Systems and Public Health (SHSPH), Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Pretoria. He holds a PhD in biostatistics from the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN). He completed his Biostatistics Post-Doctoral Fellowship at the Johns Hopkins University’s Bloomberg School of Public Health in the USA. He has worked as a Senior Biostatistician at several medical research organizations including the South African Medical Research Council (MRC), Wits Health Consortium, Right to Care, and the U.S. Centers for Diseases Control and Prevention (CDC). Professor Musekiwa is also a Biostatistician for the School of Health Systems and Public Health, where he provides biostatistical support to staff and postgraduate students. His research interest is in HIV/AIDS among adolescent girls and young women in sub-Saharan Africa, where he has published widely. He is a C2 NRF-rated researcher as an applied biostatistician and is a specialist in systematic reviews and meta-analyses.
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Dr Kuhlula Maluleke HW Snyman Building South Room 5-05 [email protected]Kuhlula Maluleke is an epidemiologist and public health researcher who recently completed her PhD under REASSUED-@UP. She completed her PhD in record time and presented three published manuscripts and two under review in her thesis. Her research focus is on improving supply chain management for point-of-care diagnostic services in resource-limited settings. In addition to her PhD studies, Kuhlula is a member of the UP evidence synthesis and translation research groups. In this capacity she has mentored undergraduate students. She serves as a biostatistics screener for the School of Healthcare Sciences. She is interested in adopting innovative techniques such as geographic information systems to address public health challenges.
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Biostatistician  |
Biostatistician  |
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Dr Victoria Oyekunle HW Snyman Building South Room 5-12 Dr. Oyekunle is a distinguished biostatistician with an extensive background in statistical methodologies. She is currently a lecturer at the School of Health Systems and Public Health (SHSPH), where she contributes to advancing research and education in the field. Victoria recently completed her PhD in Public Health Medicine at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, with a focus on mental health. Her groundbreaking research, in collaboration with the South African Medical Research Council (SAMRC), involved a cluster randomized controlled trial aimed at improving the mental health of young men living in informal settlements—a project that has become a defining achievement in her career. The findings from this pivotal research, which shed light on improving mental health in vulnerable populations in South Africa, were published in renowned academic journals, further emphasizing the significance of her work.
Victoria is deeply passionate about applying statistical methods to address and improve public health challenges, particularly in the areas of mental health, gender equity, intimate partner violence, and non-communicable diseases. In addition to her academic role, she serves as a biostatistician for both the SHSPH and the Faculty of Health Sciences, providing expert support in statistical analysis for a variety of public health initiatives
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Dr. Denekew Bitew Belay Health Sciences Building 4-21.3 Denekew Bitew Belay did his PhD in Statistics at Hawassa University, Ethiopia in 2017. Dr. Denekew Bitew Belay is a Senior lecturer at University of Pretoria, Faculty of Health Science, School of Health Systems and Public Health (SHSPH). He also works as Postdoctoral research fellow at the Department of Statistics, University of Pretoria. Dr. Belay is a Biostatistician with mainly focused in disease modelling, Survival Analysis and joint modelling approach for health related data. Dr. Denekew Bitew Belay provides Biostatistical support to the Faculty of Health Science, University Pretoria, staff and postgraduate students.
Please find his research work at: |
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School of Medicine Screener  |
School of Dentistry Screener
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Prof Trevor Nyakudya Prof Nyakudya is a Medical Physiologist based at the University of Pretoria where he is an Associate Professor in the Department of Physiology and School of Medicine. He is a BSc Hons, MSc Medicine (Physiology) and a Doctoral degree (Ph.D) in Medical Physiology graduate from Wits University. He also holds a Postgraduate Diploma in Health Sciences Education and an MSc in Health Science Education from Wits University. His pre-clinical medicine research focus is on the neonatal programming and the developmental origins of health and metabolic disease. He makes use of neonatal and adult animal models to investigate the potential therapeutic efficacy of alternative and complementary medicines, administered during the critical windows of developmental plasticity, against diet-induced metabolic dysfunction. Prof Nyakudya is a member of several national and international scientific societies. He has authored and co-authored several journal articles in national and international accredited journals as well as a book chapter. To date, Prof Nyakudya has supervised several MSc students and PhD students who are at various stages of their studies. |
Prof Melvin Ambele [email protected]Prof Ambele obtained his Ph.D. from UCT and is a Senior Research Officer at the Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Pathology, seconded by the Institute for Cellular and Molecular Medicine. He has unique and highly specialized skills in translation research, which has established him as an emerging leader in the field of adipogenesis, obesity and cancer. He has published extensively in his field and served as Guest Editor in ISI Journals. He also served on Review Panels for NRF (THUTHUKA) and the SAMRC (SIR) Research Grants. He is actively involved in teaching, training and supervision of postgraduate students in Genetics, Medical Immunology and Dentistry.
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External Collaborators |
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Prof (Din) Ding-Geng Chen Elected Fellow | American Statistical Association SARChI Chair in Biostatistics, Department of Statistics, University of Pretoria, South Africa Executive Director & Professor in Biostatistics, College of Health Solutions, Senior Global Futures Scientist, Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory Arizona State University, Phoenix, USA
Dr. (Din) Ding-Geng Chen is a fellow of the American Statistical Association and an elected member of the International Statistical Institute. He is currently the executive director and professor in biostatistics at the College of Health Solutions, Arizona State University, USA. He is also an extraordinary professor and the SARChI research chair in biostatistics at the University of Pretoria, an honorary professor at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. Dr. Chen was a professor in Biostatistics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, a professor in biostatistics at the University of Rochester Medical School, and the Karl E. Peace Endowed Eminent Scholar Chair in Biostatistics at Georgia Southern University. He is a senior biostatistics consultant for biopharmaceuticals and government agencies with extensive expertise in biostatistics, clinical trials, and public health statistics. Dr. Chen has more than 200 referred professional publications and co-authored and co-edited 38 books on clinical trial methodology, meta-analysis, data science, causal inference, and public health research. |
Prof Vukosi Marivate
ABSA Chair of Data Science
Data Science for Social Impact Research Group
Prof Vukosi Marivate holds the ABSA UP Chair of Data Science and is an Associate Professor of Computer Science at UP. He specializes in Machine Learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI), focusing on Natural Language Processing (NLP) and local or low-resource languages. As leader of the Data Science for Social Impact group, he works on projects in various sectors like energy and public safety. He co-founded Lelapa AI, an AI startup focusing on AI for Africans, Co-founded the Masakhane NLP research foundation and is a co-founder of the Deep Learning Indaba.
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Prof Olawande Daramola Professor Faculty of Engineering, Built Environment and IT (EBIT), UP Prof Olawande Daramola is a Professor in the Department of Informatics at the University of Pretoria, South Africa. His research is broadly in Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML), Data Science, Big Data analytics, Software Engineering, and Information Systems. He is particularly interested in using AI technologies such as ontologies, knowledge graphs, and machine learning to enable intelligent capabilities in expert systems relevant to real-world domains such as healthcare, education, government, trade, tourism, and commerce. He has deployed several methodologies in his research, including systematic literature reviews, comparative reviews, design science research, experimental design, and quantitative techniques. He has published widely in reputable international journals and conferences in Computing. He is currently serving on the editorial board of 3 leading journals in the field of Computing and on the programme committee of several prestigious international conferences in Computing. He is currently the Principal Investigator of 3 ongoing grant research projects in the area of Applied AI in Healthcare. He is also a reviewer for several top Computer Science and Information Technology journals. In addition, he has supervised many master's and doctoral students and served as an external examiner of postgraduate theses for many universities in South Africa and internationally. |
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