Category: Miscellaneous

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Postdoctoral position in Data Science for Food Systems

The eResearch Office at UWC is a division under the Deputy Vice-Chanellor Research and Innovation that promotes the use of information technology to enable fast and high impact research. Part of its mission is to drive and coordinate advanced uses of data-driven approaches to multi-, inter- and trans-disciplinary research in a dynamic environment for skills development and academic growth. A postdoctoral fellowship position is available for an outstanding candidate to undertake cutting-edge research in the development of data technology for sustainable food systems. The fellow will be awarded a tax-free fellowship for up to 2 years with opportunities for academic and personal development.

Prerequisites:

The prospective candidate should be a holder of a doctoral degree obtained within the past five years in the field related to Natural, Computer, Mathematical or Agricultural Sciences. The applicant should have interest and/or experience in modelling data of biological systems, be familiar with the concepts of sustainability within food systems and able to work without supervision, as well as in a team.

The successful candidate will be involved in the following roles:

– Conducting research in the area of data science applied to food systems
– Develop original research and publication
– Involvement in sourcing research grants
– Science engagement 
– May be requested to assist with various activities that support the eResearch agenda for the University.
– Mentor and support postgraduate students.


Interested candidates can send their CV and motivation letter to Dr Frederic Isingizwe at fisingizwe@uwc.ac.za or to Prof Clement Nyirenda at cnyirenda@uwc.ac.za.

The position remains open until filled.

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AWS Academy Generative AI Bootcamp!!!

Open to ALL – both Educators and Students!!, regardless of their status with AWS Academy!  This is a 2-part event.  Registrants may attend one or both events as desired:

Session 1 – Introduction to Prompt Engineering

Duration – 2.5 Hours
Language – English
Prerequisites – None
Dates/Times/Registration Links:
Friday, 18 October 2024 – 08:00-10:30 am Local Time UK

https://app.smartsheet.com/b/form/f8de7028d0a44bd19cc1213567999804

Session 2 – AWS Certified All Start – An AWS Builder’s Journey

Duration – 1.5 Hours
Language – English
Prerequisites – None
Dates/Times/Registration Links:
Friday, 8 November 2024 – 07:00-08:30 am Local Time UK

https://app.smartsheet.com/b/form/f8de7028d0a44bd19cc1213567999804

For Students Especially!!!

AWS Skills Centers: Becoming a Cloud Practitioner Lab Session – Instructor-led and FREE!!

Duration – 3.5 Hours
Language – English
Prerequisites – None
Dates/Times/Registration Links:
Multiple Dates and Times:
https://www.aws.training/SessionSearch?pageNumber=1&courseId=117384&languageId=1

AWS Skills Centers: Catalog – All Courses are Instructor-led and FREE!

https://www.aws.training/LearningLibrary?query=&filters=Language%3A1%20TrainingFormat%3A113&from=0&size=15&sort=_score

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INVITATION: Webinar 11 June 2024

The eResearch Office, University of the Western Cape (UWC) cordially invites you to a lecture to be conducted by visiting Prof. Temidayo Akenroye from the College of Business Administration at the University of Missouri – St Louis (UMSL).

ATTEND

Prof. Temidayo Akenroye Bio

Prof. Temidayo Akenroye is a Supply Chain Professor at the University of Missouri–St. Louis, USA. He obtained his PhD in Supply Chain Management from the University of Salford, UK, and his MS. in Sustainability Leadership from the University of Cambridge, UK. He is a globally respected scholar and expert in supply chain sustainability and public procurement. His recent works focus on addressing healthcare challenges, food security, and conflict minerals issues in the Global South through data-driven strategic interventions. Dr Akenroye’s pioneering study to enhance the supply chains of blood products and human organs in Africa has earned him widespread recognition. In the past, his research to improve the school feeding procurement systems in Kenya, Ghana, and Mali enabled more than 20,000 smallholder farmers to connect with supply opportunities. Due to the critical nature of Dr. Akenroye’s contributions, he has been invited to present his research at international conferences and symposia, and his work has been cited by researchers globally. His research is listed in the World Health Organization’s (WHO) COVID-19 Research Database as a significant contribution to pandemic preparedness. He is a member of the Peer Review College of the British Academy of Management and the Research Advisory Board for the Africa Resource Centre (ARC). He is also an academic adviser for the Kuehne Foundation in Germany and a senior visiting fellow at Lagos Business School in Nigeria. Before entering academia, he worked for organizations in the public and private sectors in the United Kingdom, Germany, Kenya, Nigeria, and the United States. Dr Akenroye is an Agenda Contributor to the World Economic Forum and has been widely sought to comment on supply chain issues on global TV channels, including Al-Jazeera and BBC News.

Seminar Topic:

Connecting African Smallholder Farmers to Structured Demand Markets: The Power of Inclusive Procurement

Abstract
Public or non-profit bodies with regular and reliable food demand create Structured Demand (SD) marketplaces. A well-known example is Home Grown School Feeding (HGSF), which connects smallholder farmers in poor nations to markets. Despite the explicit purpose of the HGSF program, smallholders’ direct involvement as suppliers has been minimal in most African nations. In this seminar, Professor. Akenroye will present his research on interventions designed to mitigate barriers facing smallholder farmers.

Date: 11 June 2024

Time: 10.00 -12.00 hours

Webinar Link: https://uwc.zoom.us/s/94213044526

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Webinar: Precision Medicine and Regenerative Medicine

The eResearch Office at the University of the Western Cape, in collaboration with the Computer and Communication Centre (CCC) and the Precision Medicine Center (PMC) at Taichung Veterans General Hospital (TVGH) in Taiwan, cordially invites you to a webinar that will focus on Precision Medicine and Regenerative Medicine. 

Date:  Thursday, 6 June 2024

Time:  09h00-11h00 (SAST)

Programme:

Speaker 1: Dr Yi-Ming Chen – Navigating New Frontiers: Precision Medicine and Polygenic Insights in Autoimmune Disease Management

Speaker 2：Dr Huey-En Tzeng – Empower precision oncology: implementing tumor board profiling solutions into MTB practice

Speaker 3：Tzu-Hung Hsiao – Taiwan Precision Medicine Initiative: The Experience from Taichung Veterans General Hospital

Speaker 4：Meng-Yin Yang – Cell therapy in cord injury

REGISTER

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The Smart Hospital Innovation at Taichung Veterans General Hospital in Taiwan

The eResearch Office at the University of the Western Cape, in collaboration with the Computer and Communication Centre at Taichung Veterans General Hospital (TVGH) in Taiwan, cordially invites you to a webinar that will focus on the Smart Hospital Innovation at Taichung Veterans General Hospital in Taiwan. TVGH has been listed in the top 300 World’s Best Smart Hospitals in 2023 and 2024. Furthermore, TVGH is a recipient of many smart hospital awards.   

Date:  Tuesday, 26th March, 2024
Time:  09h00-11h00 (SAST)

Registration Link: https://uwc.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_KSTNGhYCQYWQ9iEwZHgkJQ

Programme
This webinar is composed of four presentations, by the team from the Computer & Communications Center (CCC) at TVGH, as follows:

Session #1:Information System of Smart Hospital; Presenter: Mr Lai-Shiun Lai, Director, CCC, TVGH
Session #2:The E-Paper Use Cases in Taichung Veterans General Hospital; Presenter: Mr Yi-Chun Wu, Deputy Leader of Application Development Section, CCC, TVGH
Session #3:Smart Operation Room Management System; Presenter: Mr Chien-Chung Huang, Leader of Clinical Information Section, CCC, TVGH
Session #4:Telehealth of Hospital Information System; Presenter: Mr Ching-Tsung Chen, Leader of System Foundation Section, CCC, TVGH
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REDCap Webinar – 19 September 2023

The eResearch Office (ERO) in collaboration with the Research Development and Postgraduate Support (RDPS) are organizing a seminar on the use of REDCap, a web application for collecting and managing research data.

The purpose of this session is to comprehensively cover the many stages involved in a REDCap project, from a general overview, the initial setup, progressing through data entry and data export processes as well as using advanced features and specialized modules.

To sign up for the webinar, Click on REGISTER


Email queries: Ms Aasiyah Chafekar (RDPS) at achafekar@uwc.ac.za or
Dr Frederic Isingizwe (eResearch) at fisingizwe@uwc.ac.za

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Opportunity: Zindi Ambassadors

Zindi, a Data Science platform and social enterprise with a focus on building a “data science ecosystem” in Africa, is looking for volunteer Ambassadors. The role will involve creating awareness in your own communities about data science and Zindi activities. Zindi’s mission is to build the data science ecosystem in Africa. They are a Cape Town-based company with a vision for a vibrant community of data scientists across Africa, mobilised towards solving the region’s most pressing problems.

Find out more and register to become an ambassador: https://bit.ly/3IViXPw

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eWorkshop: Command Line Interface for Genomics Beginners

Forensic DNA Lab UWC

UWC’s Forensic DNA Lab (FDL) hosted an eWorkshop (online workshop) on using the Command Line Interface, Unix, shell and other tools for genomics.

The course was aimed at graduate students and research scientists who will work with genomic and bioinformatic datasets for the first time and ran from 10thJune to 15thJuly in two hours weekly sessions.

Seventeen (17) participants were registered, including staff, Honours, Masters and PhD students from different institutions including the South African Biodiversity Institute; University of the Western Cape; Stellenbosch University; University of Johannesburg; University of Pavia (Italy) and ICGEB/UCT.

More about the eWorkshop

Command line interface (CLI) and graphic user interface (GUI) are different ways of interacting with a computer. The CLI ‘is a text-based interface used to interact with software and operating system by typing commands into the interface and receive a response in the same way’. The GUI on the other hand, is a visual-based interface featuring the use of graphic images such as windows, icons and menus, and is navigated mostly using a mouse and the keyboard sometimes.

The CLI is important for proficiency in genomics as most bioinformatics tools use the shell and have no graphical interface. Importantly, CLI is essential for using remote high performance computing centers e.g. ILIFU, CHPC.

The course was designed to impart the following knowledge and skills to the participants:

  1. Discuss practical differences between Unix and Windows;
  2. Navigate and manipulate files and folders using standard bash commands;
  3. Write basic scripts for bash including piping between commands;
  4. Access the ILIFU HPC and submit simple scripts to SLURM; and
  5. Discuss folder/directory structure for genomic projects.

The ilifu cluster computing infrastructure was used for training tasks, which included lessons on basic Unix bash commands and practical activities which required specialised Singularity containerized software.