Dr Freedom Gumedze of the Department of Statistical Sciences has been awarded a Newton Advanced Fellowship from the Royal Society, in partnership with the Academy of Medical Sciences for the period 2016-2019.
The Fellowship aims to enable established international researchers with an opportunity to develop the research strengths and capabilities of their research groups through training, collaboration and reciprocal visits with a partner in the UK.
During the Fellowship, Dr Gumedze will collaborate with Prof Jane Hutton and researchers at the University of Warwick under research project titled “Robust statistical methods and statistical diagnostic techniques for multivariate longitudinal and survival data in health research”. The two research groups will join forces to extend statistical methods for the analysis of longitudinal medical or health studies which follow patients over time. They will also investigate tools for assessing the robustness of conclusions, and for measuring how sensitive model estimates are to assumptions about the data and causes of incomplete data. The ultimate aim is to ensure a long-term partnership that will benefit Dr Gumedze’s research here at UCT and his post-graduate students, and his colleagues at Warwick and Cambridge.
Dr Gumedze will visit the University of Warwick at least three times during the tenure of the Fellowship to work with Jane Hutton and colleagues at the MRC Biostatistics Unit, University of Cambridge. He will also co-teach some courses given by the Academy for PhD Training in Statistics (APTS), collaboration between major UK statistics research groups for first-year PhD students. Dr Gumedze’s post-graduate student(s) will also participate in the APTS programme. Prof Hutton will lead three workshops organised in Cape Town, South Africa under this fellowship.