Qualifications and research

Dr Johané Nienkemper‐Swanepoel started her academic career at the University of the Free State (Bloemfontein) where she obtained her BSc, BSc(hons) and MSc in Mathematical Statistics with distinction. She joined Stellenbosch University in 2013 as an applied Statistics lecturer in the department of Genetics for students following agricultural programmes. She obtained her PhD in Mathematical Statistics in 2019 from the University of Stellenbosch. Her research interests focus on missing data analysis and multi‐dimensional scaling, specifically biplot visualisation. She is currently a lecturer at the Statistics and Actuarial Science department, where she is also a member of an active project team focusing on advance research in the field of multi‐dimensional data visualisation.

Associations

Dr Nienkemper‐Swanepoel is the secretary of a special interest group, the multivariate data analysis group (MDAG), of the South African Statistical Association (SASA). She is also the chairperson of the Western Cape chapter of SASA. Internationally, she is a council member of the International Federation of Classification Societies (IFCS), as well as a member of the IFCS election committee.

Awards

Johané won postgraduate paper competitions of SASA in 2014 and 2017, as well as the oral presentation competition for PhD students in 2019. She was the recipient of the international Helga and Wolfgang Gaul Stiftung Award in 2017 for outstanding researchers younger than 30 years in the field of classification and related research. This was awarded in Tokyo, Japan, during the IFCS conference.