Prof Taryn Young, distinguished Professor at Stellenbosch
University, has a driving passion to enhance capacity to advance the conduct of
and use of relevant research. She has experience in coordinating international
and national collaborative projects which facilitate the use of best evidence
in healthcare policy and practice. She
leads the Centre for Evidence-Based Health Care, Division
of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, and the Department of Global Health, at the
Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, Stellenbosch University, South Africa
Email: tyoung@sun.ac.za
Prof
Peter Nyasulu, PhD MScMed MACE: An
Infectious Diseases Epidemiologist in
the Division of
Epidemiology & Biostatistics, Department
of Global Health,
within the Faculty
of Medicine and
Health Sciences. He is a Member
of American College of Epidemiology and
have a passion
for mentorship and
capacity building of future
research leaders in control of infectious diseases in sub-Saharan Africa. Our
training programs at Stellenbosch University create an
exciting platform for
research and development
through harnessing creativity
and innovative approaches
in problem solving.
Email: pnyasulu@sun.ac.za
Prof
Celeste Naude, PhD (Nutritional Sciences), MNutr (cum laude); BScDiet. Celeste
is an associate professor at the CEBHC, Co-director of Cochrane Nutrition, and
a registered dietician (SA; UK). Her academic interests, research and
experience include evidence-informed decision-making in policy and practice for
nutrition, health and other sustainable development outcomes. Celeste is
involved in African and international research networks via Cochrane and the
Research, Evidence and Development Initiative (READ-It). She collaborates on
the conduct of systematic reviews and projects related to evidence-informed
decision-making. Celeste is an Associate Editor of Cochrane EPOC and Nutrition
Journal (BMC), a member of the SA GRADE Network, the Chronic Disease Initiative
for Africa and NutriRECS. She is a peer-reviewer for national and international
journals, and a post-graduate supervisor. Email: cenaude@sun.ac.za
Prof Tonya Esterhuizen has an MSc in Epidemiology from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and is a PhD candidate at Stellenbosch University. She has 20 years' experience as a biostatistician and is passionate about improving research capacity and empowering students in biostatistical methodology. She provides biostatistical consulting, participates in collaborative research, and teaches and supervises students on both under- and postgraduate level. Working with local and international Cochrane Review authors and groups, she assists in the reviewing and writing of systematic review protocols and meta-analysis of data. She is an elected member of the International Statistics Institute and reviewer for the Health Research Ethics Committee at Stellenbosch University. Tonya has many collaborative publications in applied biostatistics and epidemiology, in various health disciplines, and her research interest is in alternative paradigms to Null Hypothesis Significance Testing. Email: tonyae@sun.ac.za
Dr Carl Lombard is a Senior Biostatistician. He has been involved in the design, analysis, reporting and training in pragmatic trials and surveys at national, provincial and local community settings in South Africa. He also has experience in the evaluation of national programs in South Africa such as the HIV antenatal survey and the MTCT program. He has experience in the data management requirements to ensure the integrity of the data used for inference is valid and complete within the sampling and testing done in the field as well as experience of pragmatic trials in HIV, TB and NCD care and prevention including mental health. In total he has more than 30 years of experience working in the field of biostatistics and has collaborated on many training workshops related to biostatistics, research methodology and pragmatic trials.
Email: cjlombard@sun.ac.za
Dr Nasreen Jessani is a
senior researcher at the CEBHC responsible for capacity strengthening in
evidence-informed decision-making (EIDM) and knowledge translation (KT).
Her focus is on the nexus between health policy and systems research; innovations
in evidence-informed policy and practice; and the relationship between academia
and public policy. Additionally, she is faculty at the Johns Hopkins School of
Public Health, on the advisory board for INASP, UK and AcademyHealth, USA., and
Associate Editor of Health Research Policy and Systems Journal. Nasreen was
previously the Head of Strategy for the Africa Evidence Network and a program
Officer at Canada’s IDRC. She has served on several boards including WHOs
Knowledge Translation and Policy Group and as Vice-Chair of the Evidence to
Action TWG for Health Systems Global. Nasreen holds a DrPH (Johns Hopkins
University), MSPH (UNC-Chapel Hill), BSc (McGill University). Email: njessani@sun.ac.za
Dr Anke Rohwer is a senior researcher. She has a background in midwifery (BCur)
and Clinical Epidemiology (MScClinEip) and graduated with a PhD in Public
Health in March 2018. As part of her
PhD, she investigated perceived and actual health research reporting practices
related to authorship, conflicts of interest and plagiarism in low-and
middle-income countries. Her other research activities include conducting
systematic reviews on the effects of interventions, systematic reviews of
qualitative research, overviews of systematic reviews and scoping reviews. Anke
is particularly interested in systematic review methodology and currently acts
as a methods editor for Cochrane Public Health.
Anke develops and implements
training on evidence-based health care and public health, systematic reviews
and research integrity for students and healthcare professionals at various
levels in South Africa and various other African countries. Email: arohwer@sun.ac.za
Ms Anel Schoonees is a senior lecturer at the Centre for Evidence-based Health Care, Stellenbosch University in Cape Town, South Africa. She has a background in food science and dietetics, and holds master's degrees in nutrition and in clinical epidemiology. She teaches evidence-based health care and research methods to under- and postgraduate students, healthcare professionals and other healthcare decision-makers; conducts health research including systematic reviews; and is involved in knowledge translation activities to promote the uptake of evidence from systematic reviews by healthcare decision-makers. Anel promotes lifelong learning and is currently undertaking her PhD in Public Health.
Email: anelschoonees@sun.ac.za
Dr Michael McCaul , PhD, MSc Clin Epi, BTech EMC, is a clinical epidemiologist and emergency care clinician by background. As a senior lecturer in Epidemiology and Biostatistics, much of his works involves postgraduate teaching, research synthesis, knowledge translation and biostatistical consulting. His interests include meta-epidemiological research, evidence synthesis and guideline development. Michael has experience in conducting systematic reviews and has contributed as a guideline methodologist in various topics, including for the World Health Organisation. Michael co-coordinates the MSc Clin Epi programme and convenes various postgraduate modules and short courses. Michael is a section editor for AFJEM, member of the SA GRADE Network and G-I-N. In his spare time, Michael enjoys gaming and trying to convince his daughter that he is not a rideable dinosaur. Email: mmccaul@sun.ac.za
Dr Moleen Dzikiti qualified as a nurse in 2004 at the Moleen, BScNS, BCom Applied Statistics, MSc Clinical Epidemiology, MSc Biostatistics, PhD, is a trained epidemiologist – biostatistician. Her work involves many diverse roles – 1) conducting primary and secondary research, 2) biostatistics collaboration, 3) capacity building and 4) teaching. Her primary research interests include: design and analysis of observational studies, and clinical trials using both the classical and bayesian approaches. Her goals are to contribute to a society by generating research evidence for policy formulation and guiding clinical practice decision making, especially in people who are disproportionally affected by HIV/AIDS.
Email: moleenz@sun.ac.za
Dr Marianne Visser is a part-time senior researcher and registered dietician with a Master's degree in epidemiology and a PhD (public health) from the University of Cape Town and the University of the Western Cape, respectively. She conducts systematic reviews and other methodological research related to public health nutrition. As member of Cochrane nutrition, she is involved in a number of knowledge translation activities, promoting and disseminating nutrition evidence. She is a postgraduate examiner and a peer-reviewer for national and international journals.
Email: mevisser@sun.ac.za
Dr Susan van Wyk is a part time researcher at the Centre for Evidence-based Health Care. She has a background in medicine and epidemiology. As part of the Research, Evidence & Development Initiative (READ-It), Susan collaborates in conducting TB related systematic reviews and qualitative evidence syntheses to inform national and international guidelines. She also teaches evidence-based health care and screening & diagnosis methodology to undergraduate and postgraduate students.
Email:: susanvanwyk@sun.ac.za
Dr Amanda Brand is a researcher at the CEBHC, a research associate at PenTAG (University of Exeter), and the field coordinator for Cochrane Nutrition (CEBHC/South African Medical Research Council). She holds an MSc in clinical epidemiology and a PhD in health-related water microbiology. She has experience in industry and academic settings, having worked as the head of an analytical laboratory before returning to academia; where she conducts health technology assessments as well as systematic reviews, translates synthesised evidence and disseminates these findings. Amanda has been involved in guideline development for the World Health Organization internationally; and supports evidence-informed decision-making within the South African National Department of Health and the United Kingdom's National Institute for Health and Care Excellence at national levels. Email: asbrand@sun.ac.za
Dr Jody Boffa is a Research Fellow in the Division of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at Stellenbosch University and the Centre for Rural Health at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. She is a community-based researcher and epidemiologist with a focus on TB and TB-HIV in sub-Saharan Africa. She currently leads a TB REACH study connecting patients of private providers in eThekwini to free TB testing in the public sector. She is also involved in research relating to prehospital injury care guidelines, management for malaria among pharmacists in Kenya, and the impact of COVID-19 on TB care in South Africa's public and private sectors.
Email: jboffa@sun.ac.za
Mrs Liesel Floor is the project manager for the Biostatistics Unit. She is responsible for the day-to-day running and all the logistics regarding the Unit and their activities. She is also responsible for the administration of the MSc Biostatistics as well as organizing various workshops.
Email: lieselfloor@sun.ac.za
Mrs Traci Naidoo is the project manager at the Centre for
Evidence-based Health Care and Division of Epidemiology and Biostatistics. She
is responsible for coordinating the day-to-day running of the Centre and
Division.
Email: tracin@sun.ac.za
Mrs Anthea Henry the administrator for the MsC Clinical Epidemiology, MsC in Epidemioloy and PhD in Epidemiology programmes.
Email: ahenry@sun.ac.za
Dr Desmond Kuupiel PhD (Public Health), MPH (Population and Reproductive Health); BSc (Public Health and Allied Sciences). Desmond is a registered Critical Care Nurse (Ghana) and Postdoctoral Researcher Fellow at CEBHC, Honorary Senior Lecturer (Public Health) at UKZN, and CHAG Consultant (TB diagnosis sites mapping in six regions of Ghana funded by Global Fund New Funding Model 3. He is a public health and health services researcher with a focus on implementation science of point-of-care diagnostic testing for communicable and non-communicable diseases of public health concern in resource-limited settings, maternal health, and evidence synthesis. Desmond is a member of AFREhealth community and Global Burden of Disease Collaborator. In addition, Desmond collaborates on the conduct of evidence synthesis projects. Desmond is an Editorial Board Member of BMC Health Services Research, a reviewer for more than five international journals, and a postgraduate supervisor. Email: dkuupiel@sun.ac.za
Dr Idriss Ibrahim Kallon,
PhD (Public Health), MTech (Environmental Health), BSocSc (Sociology;
Development Studies Specialisation), BA (History & Political Sociology) is
a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Centre for Evidence-based Health Care (CEBHC)
since January 2021. Idriss participates in several research projects at
the CEBHC including an audit of the MSc Clinical Epidemiology course,
publication practices of Cochrane authors in sub-Saharan Africa, systematic and
scoping reviews on different health topics. With a background in social
and health sciences, he has coordinated education development programmes in
both disciplines for students at the University of Cape Town (UCT) from
2014-2018 (Department of Sociology) and 2019-2020 (The School of Public Health
& Family Medicine). During his former postdoctoral fellowship at UCT linked
to his research interests, he was involved in a collaborative and
multidisciplinary research project in TB Infection Prevention and Control in
the Western Cape and KwaZulu-Natal in 2019-2020 that led to several
publications; four of which he co-authored.. Email: kalloni@sun.ac.za
Dr Juan H Klopper MBChB(UP) MMed(Surg)(UFS)Cum Laude is a lecturer in the Division with a joint appointment in the School for Data Science and Computational Thinking, where he is a data scientist and research fellow. He is a qualified surgeon with a special interest in the development of large-scale educational resources. He is a recipient of the Educator of The Year award from the Open Education Consortium and promotes open education and open research. He teaches courses in Data Science using Python, R for biostatistics, and TensorFlow for Healthcare neural networks. Dr Klopper is the author of the textbook Introduction to Statistics with the Wolfram Language and an editor of the Journal for Open-Source Education (JOSE).
Email: juank@sun.ac.za
Daniel Mashishi is a nGap lecturer within the Division of Epidemiology and Biostatistics. His
educational achievements include structured MSc in Mathematical Science (UWC -
AIMS Stream) and MSc in Statistics (University of Limpopo). His duties include
research, teaching, biostatistical consulting and student supervision.
Email:dmashishi@sun.ac.za
Jimmy Volmink is a
Professor of Global Health and a former Dean of the Faculty of Medicine and
Health Sciences, Stellenbosch University. He was the Founding Director of
Cochrane South Africa. He began his professional career as a general
practitioner caring for socially disadvantaged communities in rural Swaziland
and townships in Cape Town. In addition to his medical degree from the
University of Cape Town he holds an MPH degree from Harvard University and a
DPhil in Epidemiology from the University of Oxford. He is a Member of the
Academy of Science of South Africa and a Fellow of the Royal College of
Physicians of Edinburgh. He has been honoured with a Leverhulme Medal for
Distinguished Contribution from the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine,
SAMRC President’s Lifetime Achievement Award and the Lifetime Chancellor’s
Award for sustained excellent career performance from Stellenbosch University.
He has been awarded an honorary doctorate from KU Leuven, Belgium in
recognition of his work to promote human dignity and his contribution to
science and practice to improve health and well-being.. Email: jvolmink@sun.ac.za
