UP Informatics lecturer Dr Timothy Adeliyi is using every bit of energy and enthusiasm he has to live a fulfilling life and make an impact.

Dr Timothy Adeliyi is on a mission. He is capitalising on every bit of his energy and enthusiasm, and taking advantage of every opportunity.

“I am still young and this is the time to put in the work, and make an impact,” he says. “That's my dream.”

It’s an attitude that is producing results: he’s had six papers published in journals and conference proceedings at the end of May, and is expecting another two to be in print by the end of June. And it is why he moved to the University of Pretoria (UP) in February, taking up an appointment as a senior lecturer in the Department of Informatics in the Faculty of Engineering, Built Environment and Information Technology.

Life had been going well at the Durban University of Technology (DUT). So well, in fact, that he had felt a bit too settled. While the prospect of a promotion loomed, he felt that wasn’t his best option, thinking he was too young for a managerial position.

“It was too early for me to be in my comfort zone,” he says. The allure of more teaching and more research beckoned. So he left the cushy life, leaving behind the home he owned, which was a mere five-minute drive to DUT, and abandoning the weekend beach life he loved. Now he is adapting to about an hour-long commute on potholed roads in heavy traffic, and a loadshedding regime unheard of on the coast. Yet he is loving it.

“Being at UP has been amazing because I have started working on stuff I had left for a very long time, like programming applications and building web applications. And I have good working colleagues. They have been very cordial, very respectful and very supportive.”

Dr Adeliyi has always hungered after a life in academia. While still an undergraduate student, he used to tutor and was told how well he explained things and how he would be a good lecturer.

“That came into my subconscious and it's something I enjoy doing: sharing knowledge, teaching people, helping out and trying to look for innovative ways to share ideas to make my peers understand stuff.”

He moved up the ranks, doing his master’s in data networks and security at Birmingham City University in the UK in 2012 and his PhD at DUT in 2018. Now he is torn between his love of teaching and researching.

“I enjoy publishing,” he says. “Research is my passion. I also love teaching, so blending both is good for me.”

Dr Adeliyi has also been involved in developing learning programmes, such as ones in networking technologies and social practice and security when he lectured at what was then the Pearson Institute of Higher Education and is now Eduvos. He is also a member of multiple review committees for conferences and journals published by the likes of Springer and Elsevier, as well as the multidisciplinary Frontiers in Education, and the International Journal of Computing and Digital Systems. And he has some corporate experience.

“I’ve worked in the industry here and there. Corporate is very interesting, demanding and challenging, but my dream from the onset has always been to work in academia. I might not earn as much as my peers in the industry but, for me, it's about fulfilling your passion and your dreams. If you do what you enjoy, your life is good.

“It’s a matter of trying something new, getting more experience and putting innovative ideas out there. That's the essence of doing my own research. And reviewing papers offers new insights that I can pass on to my own student base.”

He has been involved in some fascinating research, some of it alongside his postgraduate students. This includes developing a machine-learning model for detecting fake news on social media, the subject of a former student at DUT’s master’s thesis, and a subject on which they co-published.

A UP master’s student he is supervising is developing a sentiment analysis model for assessing customer opinions using social media data. Sentiment analysis refers to whether people rate something as good, bad or neutral, and it is the same approach Dr Adeliyi is using in his research to help inform IT organisations which of their products are performing well or not, and the factors affecting this.

Dr Adeliyi takes his career seriously, but he gives the same attention and vigour to his off-campus life. He plays the trombone, sings in the Apostolic Faith Church of Portland Oregon choir, teaches an Introduction to Music course to Grade 1 learners at the church, follows the English Premiership League and is an avid Arsenal fan. And when he has free time, he heads for the UP Sports Centre with colleagues to play tennis.

“Music helps me to relax,” he says. “I love listening to classical music, like Beethoven and Handel.”