News

Dr. Amit Mistry from NIH Visit to UoN

3/27/2024

Dr. Amit Mistry a Senior Scientist at the Center for Global Health Studies, Fogarty International Center, U.S National Institutes of Health (NIH) visited the Advancing Public Health Research in Eastern Africa through Data Science Training (APHREA-DST) Project, at the University of Nairobi on 5th March 2024. APHREA-DST project is supported by the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) Common Fund and is part of the “Harnessing Data Science for Health Discovery and Innovation in Africa” program (DS-I Africa).

Dr. Amit Mistry, (NIH), Prof. Kiros Berhane, Columbia University, Prof. Patrick Weke, PI, APHREA-DST, University of Nairobi, APHREA-DST Team, and MSc Public Health Data Science Students Representatives.

Dr. Mistry first paid a courtesy call to the Dean of the Faculty of Science and Technology, Prof. John Onyari, accompanied by the Chairman of the Department of Computing and Informatics, represented by Prof. Elisha Abade and the PI of APHREA-DST Nairobi, Prof. Patrick Weke. Later, he held a consultative meeting with the APHREA-DST team where they briefed him on the project milestones and activities. The first and second cohort of Faculty Scholars also shared the experiences and benefits gained through the SHARP courses, the faculty mentorship by CU Faculty mentors, as well as their visit to Columbia University.

Dr. Mistry culminated his visit by giving a talk to the MS Public Health Data Science students, the APHREA-DST team who were joined by Prof. Kiros Berhane, the lead PI of APHREA-DST, on the National Institute of Health and stated that its mission is to enhance health, lengthen life, and reduce illness and disability. He indicated that they have an annual budget of $48 billion for biomedical and health research and research conducted and supported across 27 Institutes and Centers being one of the largest research funders in the US.

After the presentation, there was an interactive Q&A session with the students and Dr. Mistry encouraged students to do research work that was impactful to society and publish good papers.

M.Sc. in PHDS at University of Nairobi

3/27/2024

The MPHDS provides students with a solid foundation in Data Science and computing skills in data analytics. This is achieved by integrating statistics, mathematics, and computing, as well as machine learning and Artificial intelligence. The program offers upgrading opportunities for those who wish to equip themselves with Data Science and data analytic skills. It also helps to meet the growing demands for a big data workforce in all industries by transforming graduates in quantitative science into Data Science and analytics practitioners. Its applications are in many fields, including business, engineering, natural sciences, social sciences, humanities, and healthcare.

At the University of Nairobi, the MPHDS was launched in October 2022 and applications were open to its first cohort of students. This attracted a total of 32 applicants who were vetted by the selection committee and the number narrowed down to 15. This group started its academic journey in February of 2023 and is currently in its second year of the program. In August of 2023, applications were again open for the second cohort of students. The cycle of applications attracted a total of 60 applicants and after the vetting process, the number was reduced to 28. The 28 students started classes in October of 2023.

The success of the students will be achieved not only by their hard work but also by the consistency in the exchange of ideas among the faculty taking them through the various courses. To this effect, the faculty led by the APHREA-DST UoN chapter PI, Prof. Patrick Weke, have and continue meeting regularly to share experiences on teaching and student interactions in the various courses.

Faculty Scholar Visit

3/27/2024

One of the APHREA-DST’s training programs is the Faculty Development program which aims at building faculty capacity in Public Health and Data Science. In year 2 of the APHREA-DST project, the second cohort of Faculty Scholars, two from AAU and two from UoN were selected, that is, Merger, Awgichew, Kipchirchir, and Carolyne. These 4 not only had an opportunity to be peer mentored by the first cohort of Faculty Scholars, but also participated in training, mentoring, and knowledge exchange from experienced faculty at Columbia University. Awgichew and Carolyne are under the mentorship of Dr. Linda Valeri, in the Department of Biostatistics while Merger and Kipchirchir are under the mentorship of Prof. Samory Kpotufe, from the Department of Statistics.

The culmination of the second cohort Faculty mentorship was a visit to Columbia University from October 9 to 13, 2023. Just as with the first cohort, the second cohort was also joined by their institutional mentors, the APHREA-DST PIs for AAU and UoN, Dr. Rahel Bekele, and Prof. Patrick Weke. The visit to Columbia started with a joint welcome Caribbean dinner at The Radio Hotel, where the Faculty Scholars and institutional mentors enjoyed the new culture in food, music, and dance, thanks to the wonderful organization by APHREA-DST PI, Prof. Kiros Berhane, and interim project manager, Mrs. Niurka Suero-Tejeda.

In the days that followed, the scholars were involved in a series of discussions and mentorship sessions with their Columbia University mentors, Dr. Valeri and Prof. Kpotufe. These physical meetings were a welcome change from the online meetings that were being held while the scholars were in their home institutions. The scholars not only got an opportunity to expand their horizons in terms of research but also gained from the wealth of knowledge in student mentorship in Data Science at Columbia.

Further, the team led by Prof. Kiros Berhane, met with the Dean, of Mailman School of Public Health (MSPH), Dean Linda Fried, to discuss the experiences in Public Health research at Columbia and Eastern Africa.

In addition, the Faculty Scholars took a trip to Columbia School of Nursing (SON) where they were involved in a half-day session of presentation and discussions with the faculty led by Prof. Suzanne Bakken. These discussions were very informative and an eye-opening opportunity to the wealth of applications of data science in the nursing field

A visit to Columbia University would not be complete without a trip to the Morningside Campus, thus, the faculty scholars and mentors took a day trip tour to the campus under the able guidance of Mrs. Niurka Suero-Tejeda. While at Morningside, the team together with Prof. Kiros Berhane, met with Prof. Vijay Modi at the Department of Engineering, to explore the data collected using their renewal energy technologies and discuss possibilities of collaboration. The day then closed with joint farewell dinner at Tartina Italian Restaurant.

On the final day of the visit, Prof. Kiros Berhane together with Prof. Pam Factor-Litvak organized a roundtable at MSPH where the T32 trainees at the Department of Epidemiology and the visiting Faculty Scholars shared their research which sparked a very interesting and fruitful discussion.

3RD DS-I AFRICA CONSORTIOM MEETING

2/8/2024

The DS-I consortium meeting was held in Kigali, Rwanda from 3rd November to 9th November 2023. The meeting was attended by over 250 researchers and stakeholders.

APHREA-DST was well represented by the PIs Prof Kiros Berhane, Dr. Rahel Bekele, Prof Patrick Weke and Co-PIs Dr. Elisha Abade and Dr. Idah Orowe. The meeting addressed critical areas of interest such as Sustainable Data Analysis Pipelines, Data Governance and Cross-border data sharing.

Dr. Rahel Bekele presented the APHREA-DST project updates and reflections titled “Developing impactful and sustainable public health data science graduate degree programs through research partnership”

Prof Elisha presented his work on “Machine Learning Approach to Strengthening Health System Programs”

Dr. Idah Orowe presented her work titled “Estimating Time to Viral Suppression among patients on ART and associated factors”

AAU welcomes first batch to PHDS

11/8/2023

AAU conducted a welcoming and orientation session for the 1st cohort of MSc in Public Health Data Science students. The session started with welcoming speech by Dr. Rahel Bekele who have gone through the project objectives, achievements and milestones completed so far. She has also explained the courses and activities in the program.
Dr. Wondwossen Mulugeta, project team member and currently the Vice President for Institutional Developmnent also gave his expert advice on what is expected of students as well has how best they can make use of the program
Prof. Belay Simane added the importance of collaboration and engagement with partner institutions for data sharing and internship. He provided guidance on how they should engage in their academic and research activities.

M.Sc. in PHDS Launched at AAU

11/8/2023

Addis Ababa University is proud to announce the launch of its M.Sc program in Public Health Data Science (PHDS) with the first cohort of 30 regular program students selected from more than 300 applicants. Because of the large number of applicants, it has also opened an extension program with another cohort of 30 students.
The major purpose of the program is to equip graduates with the knowledge and skills to employ cutting-edge data science tools and advance effective solutions to pressing public health issues. As such the graduates are expected to apply machine learning tools and techniques to reveal features of large, complex health-related datasets.
The program is hosted by the School of Information Science an is run in collaboration with the School of Public Health, Department of Statistics, and College of Development Studies at AAU. We are also privileged to partner with Columbia University (USA) and the University of Nairobi (Kenya) in this M.Sc program. As you are well aware this program will be opened as part of our project entitled “Advancing Public Health Research in Eastern Africa (APHREA-DST)”, funded by the U.S. National Institute of Health (NIH).
The first cohort of students have come from a diverse set of backgrounds. The statistics is presented below.

Admissions now open at AAU

9/18/2023

The call for application for the newly launched public health data science masters program at Addis Ababa University was announced on August 13, 2023 (See). Following the announcement more than 300 interested applicants submitted their application for admission.

The applicants have already got the pass mark in the University wide Graduate Admission Test (GAT) and awaiting the subject matter entrance examination to be administered on September 23, 2023. Student who will be admitted will be enrolled in a bridge course to equip them with basics of IT and epidemiology. The program will commence based on the academic year start date set by the university.

Admissions open for msc at uon

12/15/2022

APHREA-DST is pleased to announce the upcoming launch of the new University of Nairobi MSc in Data Science, with a track in Public Health Data Science, in January 2023.

Candidates interested in applying are advised to find application details on the UoN website. Application materials are due by December 31, 2022.

With questions, please reach out to UoN APHREA-DST Project Coordinator Martha Mugo: [email protected]

2nd Ds-i Africa consortium meeting

12/7/2022

APHREA-DST Contact PI Prof. Kiros Berhane and MPIs from AAU and UoN, Dr. Rahel Bekele and Prof. Patrick Weke, as well as the Project Director Dr. Isabelle Zaugg and AAU Faculty Scholar/Investigator Dr. Wondwossen Mulugeta, recently attended the Second Meeting of the DS-I Africa Consortium in Cape Town, South Africa. This event was informative and strengthened our connections with the network of DS-I Africa projects doing complementary training, research, data hub development, and ethical and legal framework design for health data sharing across the continent.

Prof. Kiros Berhane presented the APHREA-DST project and recent milestones, while Dr. Wondwossen Mulugeta presented his work on "Data Warehouse Architecture for the Ethiopian Health Sector."

Read more about the meeting here.

Faculty Scholars visit Columbia

8/15/2022

A Faculty Development program is a core component of APHREA-DST’s multi-tiered training programs. Two Faculty Scholars from AAU and two from UoN were selected in the inaugural year of the program (2021-2022) to participate in training, mentoring, and knowledge exchange in the field of public health data science, benefiting from the expertise of experienced faculty from Columbia and their own institutions. AAU’s Faculty Scholars were Dr. Wondwossen Mulugeta and Dr. Getachew Hailemariam. UoN’s Faculty Scholars were Dr. Idah Orowe and Dr. Elisha Abade. A keystone of the program was a visit to Columbia’s campus from August 29 – September 2, 2022. The Faculty Scholars were joined on this visit by their institutional mentors, the APHREA-DST PI from AAU, Dr. Rahel Bekele, and UoN PI Prof. Patrick Weke. During the visit they spent several sessions with their Columbia Mentors, Dr. Jeff Goldsmith and Dr. Tiffany Sanchez, as well as Prof. Kiros Berhane, who served as the third PI mentor.

APHREA-DST Project Director Dr. Isabelle Zaugg, in partnership with project partners, also organized a series of visits with faculty and supporting institutions across campus. A “Meet & Greet” luncheon including APHREA-DST’s Columbia investigators and MSPH department chairs kicked off the week. The visiting scholars met with Dean Linda Fried and other MSPH Deans to discuss priorities in public health research at Columbia and at their home institutions in Eastern Africa. Dr. Dan Westervelt organized a joint research symposium at Lamont-Doherty Campus in which a mix of Faculty Scholars and Columbia researchers presented recent research projects. Prof. Tian Zheng, Chair of the Department of Statistics, hosted the group for a lunch and discussion about innovative training ideas. The Data Science Institute welcomed the group for an introduction to their cross-disciplinary data science work, with a particular focus on the Center for Health Analytics; the visiting PIs also shared a snapshot of their university’s history and work on data science-related activities. The visiting scholars participated in the closing dinner of the Department of Biostatistics annual retreat, mingling with faculty, administration, and postdoctoral fellows. A half-day seminar was held at the School of Nursing, led by Prof. Suzanne Bakken and colleagues, who shared varied research and applied projects at the intersection of data science and nursing practice. Prof. Pam Factor-Litvak organized a fruitful roundtable discussion with Epidemiology T32 trainees.