About Us

Elma Akob holds a Master's in Strategic Business Management and supports the South African SDG Hub's communication functions. She has worked with global entertainment companies and has moderated and spoken on national and global platforms.

Dr Jurgens de Lange, the Hub’s technical project advisor, is a theoretical and computational chemist used to working with massive and highly correlated data sets, often developing machine learning, mathematical and computational models to find clear and pragmatic answers. He has a keen interest in evidence-based and data-driven policy research.

Professor Willem Fourie is the founder and coordinator of the South African SDG Hub. In addition to his peer-reviewed publication and postgraduate supervision record, he as extensive experience in advising companies, countries and multilateral organisations. He has worked closely with the United Nations, African Union, European Union and the Presidency of South Africa.

Andre Kleynhans is a trained data scientist with an honour’s degree in mathematical statistics. Andre has special interest in unsupervised learning and latent variable models.

Teresa Kroesen holds a Master’s in Physics with a specialization in optics and ultra-fast dynamics. She acquired profound knowledge in Python programming through the analysis of huge and unstructured data sets and simulations of physical experiments. After she worked as an IT consultant she became a data scientist for the major German newspaper Der Spiegel, which is known for its investigative journalism. Her work for the SA SDG Hub combines her passion for data with her strong interest in politics and research.

Professor Vukosi Marivate is the ABSA UP Chair of Data Science at the University of Pretoria. Vukosi works on developing Machine Learning/Artificial Intelligence methods to extract insights from data. A large part of his work over the last few years has been in the intersection of Machine Learning and Natural Language Processing.

Zama Moyo supports the South African SDG Policy Support Initiative. He completed his MA at the University of Essex and has written on a broad range of issues related to public policy and current affairs. In 2013 he was selected as a finalist in the Global Human Rights Essay Contest. He is currently working on his doctoral thesis.

Dr Dominique Mystris is the project lead for the SA SDG Policy Support Initiative. With a background in Public International Law, she has lectured at various universities since 2011, worked for international research institutions and organisations, and consulted for non-profit organisations in Africa, Asia and London on human rights and international law issues including development of policy approaches.

Nhlanhla Jamie Simelane is a front-end web developer and data scientist with an honours degree in Bioinformatics, and experience in both cloud-based data warehousing solutions and web application development for research institutions. She became interested in front-end development during her time working as a Data Science intern for a forest tree genetics research institution, and has since been expanding her knowledge of web application frameworks and interface design.

Hannes Strydom is a specialist in all things data: collection, (including APIs, repositories or webpages), management (including data formatting and storage) and data analysis.

Isak van der Walt is currently Digital Scholarship & Innovation Manager for the Department of Library Services at the University of Pretoria. He oversees the Digital Services and Systems unit which comprises of Digital Scholarship, Information Technology, e-Services, Digitisation, and the Library MakerSpace. With over 20 years of experience in the academic ICT sector, he has developed a key interest and focus on Research Data Management and using modern-day technologies for the enhancement, visibility, and discoverability of digital assets.

Hamish Craze holds a Masters in Bioinformatics where he specialised in deep learning applications. His broad skillset includes image recognition, natural language processing, and search. As well as web development, linux server setup/management and databases.

Graeme Ford is a Full-stack web developer with qualifications in both backend and front end industry-level frameworks. A development operations manager with experience in stack planning, environmental administration and architecture planning/configuration from small scale to enterprise-scale deployments.

Christopher Marais is a data scientist with a skill set that focuses on machine learning applications to natural language process and graph network analysis.