Professor Abba B Gumel, an extraordinary professor from UP’s Department of Mathematics and Applied Mathematics, has been elected as a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Professor Abba B Gumel, an extraordinary professor from the Department of Mathematics and Applied Mathematics at the University of Pretoria (UP), has been elected as a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in recognition of his scientific and socially notable achievements during his career.

The AAAS is the world’s largest general scientific society and publisher of the Science family of journals. It annually elects scientists, engineers and innovators from around the world and across disciplines as fellows, which is one of the most distinguished honours within the scientific community.

“I’m very pleased to have been elected as a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science,” said Prof Gumel, who is a professor of mathematics at the University of Maryland in the US, where he holds the Michael and Eugenia Brin Endowed E-Nnovate Chair in Mathematics. “It is great to be among the eminent scientists elected in this year’s class of AAAS fellows. I’d like to thank you for the collaboration, collegiality, friendship and brotherhood.”

As a mathematical biologist, he specialises in designing, rigorously analysing and parameterising novel mathematical models for gaining insight and understanding of the transmission dynamics and control of emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases that are of public health significance.

In 2022, Prof Gumel was elected as a fellow of the American Mathematical Society for his outstanding contributions to the creation, exposition, advancement, communication and utilisation of mathematics. Additionally, he is a fellow of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics and of the African Scientific Institute, as well as the 2021 winner of the Bellman Prize, which is awarded to a research team or investigator whose Mathematical Bioscience article has made an outstanding contribution to their research field. Prof Gumel delivered the 2021 AMS Einstein Public Lecture in Mathematics.