Page 27 - Science in Africa

Doctor Joyce Malebo Professor Bhekisipho Twala

Passionate

about

indigenous
knowledge

Doctor Ntsoaki Joyce Malebo is
a National Research Foundation Developing
Career Advancement fellow,
currently appointed as senior
lecturer and head of department
in the department of life science
at the Central University of
Technology in South Africa. AI solutions
Her research interests lie in
the fields of microbiology and
food safety, particularly the use
of plant-based oils as alternative hekisipho Twala is a professor in promoting and conducting research in artificial
antimicrobials against artificial intelligence and statistical intelligence within the electrical and electronic
antimicrobial-resistant food- science and the director of the engineering science fields and developing novel
borne pathogens. Institute for Intelligent Systems at and innovative solutions to key research problems
She is also passionate about the University of Johannesburg (UJ) in these areas.
research that links “Western Bin South Africa. Professor Twala earned his bachelor’s degree in
knowledge” with African Before that, he was head of the Economics and Statistics from the University
indigenous knowledge systems. electrical and electronic engineering of Swaziland in 1993; followed by a
She believes that knowledge science department at UJ. postgraduate certificate in Statistics,
should be shared and skills Professor Twala was a an MSc in Statistics from
should be transferred in order principal research scientist at Southampton University (UK) in
to have successful researchers the Council of Science and 1995; and a PhD in Machine
and to empower knowledge Industrial Research (CSIR) Learning and Statistical Science
holders within communities. within the modelling and from the Open University (UK)
So little of indigenous digital science unit (where he in 2005.
knowledge has been is currently an adviser). His broad research
incorporated into mainstream His research work at the interests include
education and research, so her CSIR involved an expanded multivariate statistics,
objective is to see indigenous swath of data, analytics, and applied and theoretical
knowledge incorporated into optimisation approaches that machine learning, knowledge
mainstream “research and brings a more complete discovery and reasoning with
knowledge”. understanding of digital uncertainty, and the interface
She has successfully customer experiences. between statistics and computing.
supervised master’s students Professor Twala was He has particular interests in
and currently supervises also a post-doctoral applications in finance,
master’s and doctoral students. researcher at Brunel medicine, psychology,
Doctor Malebo has more than University in the UK, software engineering and,
10 publications in international mainly focussing on most recently, in robotics.
journals and has presented her empirical software He has published more
work at more then 30 local and engineering research and than 100 scientific papers.
international conferences. looking at data quality He is also editor-in-chief
She is married and has two issues in software of the International
beautiful daughters. engineering. Currently, Journal of Semantic and
his work involves Infrastructure Services.
SCIENCE IN AFRICA 27