Steering Committee

The DSTI-NRF CoE-MaSS is governed by a Steering Committee. The Committee meets twice a year, and consists of external individual members, founding node leaders, and ex officio members:

Chairperson (Kerstin Jordaan)

Prof Kerstin Jordaan is a full professor in Mathematics in the Department of Decision Sciences at the University of South Africa and the previous part-time Executive Director of the South African Mathematics Foundation. She served the academic community as elected President of the South African Mathematical Society from 2016-2019. Her research interests are Special Functions and Orthogonal polynomials. She holds an NRF B rating and was awarded a Royal Society Newton Advanced Fellowship for her research in these areas. She currently serves as chairperson of the National Research Foundation Evaluation and Ratings panels, as Council member of AIMS South Africa, and Advisory Board member of the National Graduate Academy for Mathematical and Statistical Sciences.

DSI representative (Rose Msiza)

Rose Msiza is the Director: Research Support in the Department of Science and Innovation (DSI). She is responsible for policy development and funding of programmes aimed at the development of high-level skills in the areas of Science, Engineering and Technology, including Social Sciences and Humanities. This responsibility entails oversight responsibility over human capital development initiatives, and the implementing agency – the National Research Foundation (NRF). Some of the flagship human capital development initiatives she oversees include the South African Research Chairs Initiative (SARChI) and the Centres of Excellence (CoEs), implemented by the NRF, as well as the Internship Programme implemented by the Human Sciences Research Council. Prior joining the DSI, she was working for the NRF and held different positions, supporting the implementation of country-to-country bi- and multi-lateral agreements, mobility, infrastructure and research capacity development programmes.

Executive Director of the Research Chairs and Centres of Excellence directorate at the National Research Foundation (Makobetsa Khati)

Dr Makobetsa Khati holds a BSc Honours in Public Health from UCT. He completed his MSc at Imperial College London and his DPhil in Molecular Pathology at Oxford University where he subsequently was also a post-doctoral fellow at the Sir William Dunn School of Pathology. In addition, he was a Visiting Scientist at the Scripps Research Institute in San Diego, California. Dr Khati spent 10 years at the CSIR. He also worked at the Institute for Infectious Diseases at UCT, where he currently holds an Honorary Professorship.

NWU node leader (Louis Labuschagne)

Prof Louis Labuschagne obtained his PhD in 1988 in the field of Single Linear Operator theory. He started his professional academic career in the same year at Stellenbosch University, moving to the University of Pretoria in 1992. This move also coincided with a shift in his research focus to Operator Algebras and their application to Quantum Theory. After spending 19 years in Pretoria, first at the University of Pretoria and then UNISA from 2001, he took up an appointment at North-West University in January 2011.

UP node leader (Jacek Banasiak)

Prof Banasiak earned a Master of Engineering degree from the Technical University of Lódz in Poland and his Doctor of Philosophy in Mathematics from the University of Strathclyde in the United Kingdom. He also received his Doctor of Science (habilitation) from the University of Warsaw in 1999 thanks to his research and holds the state title of Professor, conferred on him by the President of the Republic of Poland in 2007.
He is also an associate of the National Institute for Theoretical Physics (NITheP) and African Institute of Mathematical Sciences and a member of the executive of the African Mathematical Union for which he acts as the Editor in Chief of the AFRIKA MATEMATIKA, the only Pan African journal aimed at promoting African mathematical research in the world and bringing the international mathematics to Africa.

CoE-MaSS Director (Bruce Watson)

Bruce completed his PhD in multiparameter inverse spectral problems in the 1996. Following that he was a Pacific Institute of Mathematical Sciences Post Doctoral Fellow at the University of Calgary. He worked mainly in the spectral theory of differential operators and their inverse problems for many years, but recently has shifted focus to stochastic, mixing and ergodic processes in vector lattices.

Wits Node Leader (Anna Kaduma Gumbie)

Mrs Anna Kaduma Gumbie lectures Statistics at the School of Statistics and Actuarial Science at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits). She received her MSc from the Indiana University of Pennsylvania (IUP) in 2003 and has been with Wits since 2008. She was previously a lecturer in the Statistics department at the University of Namibia from 2003 to 2008, before joining Wits. Her research interests include modelling of longitudinal data, with focus on the covariance matrices models of such data and has recently worked on degradation models.

Wits Research Development (Yolanda Davids)

Dr Yolanda Davids, is the Deputy Director of Research at the University of the Witwatersrand (WITS). Dr Davids holds a PhD in Business Management from North-West University, a Masters in Commerce from the University of Johannesburg, and a Bachelor of Science from the University of the Western Cape. Dr Davids has dedicated herself to the advancement of research and academia. Before joining our WITS, she served for 12 years at the National Research Foundation, where she played a pivotal role as the Director of Grants, focusing on 足球竞彩app排名 and Postdoctoral Support. Her expertise is not just in the realm of academic achievements but also in the practical aspects of research management, including pre and post-award processes and student funding.
She is passionate about nurturing the next generation of scholars and researchers, and her role at WITS encompasses guiding and supporting our postgraduate students through their academic journeys.