Dr Marius Smuts started his academic career in 2017 when he was appointed as a lecturer at the Department of Statistics in the School for Mathematical and Statistical Sciences at the North-West University. He completed his BSc, BSc Honours and MSc degree in Financial Mathematics all with distinction from the North-West University. In 2020 he obtained his PhD degree in Business Mathematics from the NWU.

His research interests include optimisation methods in finance, price optimisation, credit risk modelling, goodness-of-fit testing and survival analysis. He has published various articles nationally and presented his research studies at both local and international conferences.

Dr. Smuts has also co-developed and presented numerous short courses in different statistical software packages for researchers as well as post graduate students.

In 2020 he was the chairperson of StatCon2020 (Statistics Convention, 2020) an online workshop hosted by the Statistics Department of NWU as well as the newly formed research entity Pure and Applied Analytics (PAA). He is currently the chairperson of the Operations Research Society of South Africa’s (ORSSA) Vaal Triangle Chapter and is also a member of the South Africa Statistical Association (SASA).