Prof Atangana is a full professor at the UFS. He obtained his PhD degree in applied mathematics from the University of Free State in 2013. He serves as reviewer of more than 200 international accredited journals and has been awarded the world champion of peer review twice, in 2016 and 2017. He is editor in more than 20 journals of applied mathematics and mathematics and editor in chief of 2 international journals. He has been Lead guest editor of more than 10 special issues in top international accredited journals of  applied mathematics  He has presented and participated in more than 20 international conferences and has been invited as plenary speaker in more than 10 international conferences of applied mathematics.

His research interests are methods and applications of partial and ordinary differential equations, fractional differential equations, perturbation methods, asymptotic methods, iterative methods, and groundwater modelling.

Prof Jelassi is an associate professor of physics in the National Centre for Nuclear Sciences and Technologies (CNSTN) in Tunisia. He received the B.Sc degree in Physics from University of Tunis El Manar in 2002. Awarded as the first range student, he obtained the Tunisian government fellowship for master degrees and PhD studies in France. He obtained his Master diploma in atomic physics and lasers in 2003 and then his Phd in 2007 from the University Of Paris XI (Orsay-Paris).

Between 2006 and 2009, he was in post doc positions in different French laboratories in Paris and Toulouse. In 2009, he becomes an assistant professor in CNSTN. He obtained its supervising diploma from the University of Tunis El Manar in  2014. In 2015, he becomes an associate professor in Nuclear and atomic physics . Dr. Haikel Jelassi is interested on many research fields in fundamental as well as in applied physics such as atomic, molecular and plasma physics.

He's in charge of the construction of the first Tunisian atomic clock. He's interested also in the research reactors and plasma Tokomak reactors. He has authored more than 17 scientific articles in peer-reviewed journals, as well as one patent. He has supervised several PhD and undergraduate students. He's also active through the Tunisian Physical Society in there he acts as a member of the national board. He organized several conferences and workshops probing several scoop for the North African and Arab regions.

Dr Haikel JELASSI is a member of four journal’s editorial boards. He's regularly asked to review papers for publications in peer-reviewed journals. He’s TWAS young affiliate and member of the new born network TYAN network. Prof. JELASSI is always asked to referee proposals such as with the AUF (Agence Universitaire de Francophonie) or the COST network. Since 2012, he also acts as a technical assessor in time-frequency metrology with TUNAC the Tunisian Accreditation Body and OLAS the Luxembourgian Accreditation Boby.

I enrolled at the North-West University (NWU) in South Africa in 2003, completing my BSc, BSc (Hons), MSc and PhD degrees in physics, specializing in Space Physics, at the same institution. I was appointed as a junior lecturer in physics at the NWU in 2008 and promoted to lecturer in 2011 and to senior lecturer in 2014. After my PhD, during sabbatical leave periods, I completed two postdoctoral fellowships; in 2014, I was awarded an Alexander von Humboldt fellowship to the Ruhr University in Bochum, Germany and in 2015 I was selected as a Fulbright Visiting Scholar to perform research at the Center for Space Plasma and Aeronomic Research (CSPAR), located at the University of Alabama in Huntsville "Rocket City", USA.

My research is mostly computational in nature where we study, using complex numerical models, the propagation of charged particles in turbulent plasmas. These particles may be harmful to astronauts and damaging to any equipment in space, and we aim to predict the arrival of these hazardous particles. In the broader context, this is an essential part of space weather studies.

Esmael is a Public Eye Health Specialist with nine years of experience in eye care research and service delivery. He has successfully coordinated various large collaborative research projects on the management of the blinding stage of trachoma (infectious blinding eye disease), which are currently influencing global policy, and delivered surgical service to thousands of people who were at risk of losing their sight from trachoma. Dr Esmael holds a Master’s Degree and PhD from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), UK.

He was awarded the Gordon Johnson Prize for outstanding performance during his MSc course; and took a public Management and Leadership Course at Georgia State University, USA, provided by Mandela Washington Fellowship Programme for Young African Leaders. Dr Esmael is currently a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the International Centre for Eye Health (ICEH) at LSHTM. He will lead eye care research projects in Ethiopia, and hopes to develop and lead comprehensive eye care research, training and service providing institution that will help alleviate the huge burden of avoidable blindness in his country Ethiopia.

Dr Sow is an Associate Professor of Parasitology at the Faculty of Medicine, University Cheikh Anta Diop (UCAD) of Dakar, Senegal. Dr Sow is a MD, specialized in Clinical biology since 2013. As a biologist, Dr SOW hold a position in the Parasitology department at the Teaching Fann Hospital. After completing a MSc and PhD degrees respectively in 2011 and 2014 both in UCAD, Dr Sow received a fellowship for a two years Postdoctoral position in URMITE of Aix-Marseille Université, France.His research interest includes molecular biology, immunology, proteomic and epidemiology of human parasitic and fungal diseases.

During his postdoctoral fellow, he worked on the development of innovative tools (Real time PCR, MALDI TOF MS) for the diagnosis and the surveillance of helminthiasis including Soil transmitted helminths and Schistosomiasis. Currently, he is the principal investigator of the study entitled “Assessment of innovative tools for the diagnosis of gastrointestinal parasitic diseases in malnourished children”, project funded by the African center of excellence for mother and Child in Senegal (World Bank funding). He is also the principal coordinator of the schistosomiasis team, who received a support for three years activities from the program “Jeune Equipe Associée à l’IRD” granted by the Institut de Recherche et Dévelopment (French government).

Dr SOW is also involved in the WANETAM 2 program granted by the EDTCP as co-coordinator of the Neglected Tropical Diseases work group. He has published several papers and co-authored in many publications in the international literature.

Dr Adeniyi Olagunju is a Wellcome Trust Fellow at the Faculty of Pharmacy, Obafemi Awolowo University, Nigeria. Adeniyi holds a PhD in Pharmacology from the University of Liverpool. He is currently investigating the effect of host genetics on the dynamics of the HIV-1 virus and antiretroviral drugs in mother-to-child transmission fluids with funding from the Wellcome Trust. He also uses mechanistic modelling to evaluate foetal and infant exposure to maternal therapeutic drugs in utero and through breastmilk. Adeniyi is also interested in developing novel bioanalytical methods for quantifying drug molecules in biological matrices.

He has previously received funding from HIV Research Trust, UK and Tertiary Education Trust Fund, Nigeria. In additional to presenting his work at key international conferences like the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI), he has published in Clinical Infectious Diseases, Clinical Pharmacology & Therapeutics, Journal of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy, and other highly rated journals in his field. He currently teaches and supervises undergraduate and postgraduate pharmacy students at Obafemi Awolowo University.

Dr Adeniyi is a researcher and lecturer of Medical Statistics. He holds a Ph.D. in Biostatistics from the University of Ibadan Nigeria in addition to First Class Honours BSc degree in Statistics from the University of Ilorin, Nigeria and Masters of Science in Medical Statistics from Lancaster University, United Kingdom. He has been teaching and researching in the University system, mainly at postgraduate level, for over ten years.

He has successfully supervised a score of Masters Students’ dissertation and currently supervising one doctoral student. I have over 55 publications in peer-reviewed journals and have attended many local and international conferences in the last five years. He was an awardee of the Consortium for Advanced Research Training in Africa (CARTA) Fellowship and a Post-Doctoral Fellowship in North-West University, South Africa in 2015. He was a recipient of the 2014 Medical Education Partnership Initiative in Nigeria (MEPIN) Mentored Research Award been an NIH grant-supported research funded by the Fogarty International Centre, USA and the 2015 CARTA Re-Entry grant.

Dr Ngugi is a lecturer at Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and technology with a strong background in medical microbiology and molecular epidemiology. Her Career in science started after graduating with a BSc in Medical Microbiology, magna cum laude, from JKUAT, and then an MSc in Molecular Medicine and a PhD in Epidemiology from JKUAT with a research placement at the Institute of Applied Tumor Biology, Heidelberg University.  Dr Ngugi has also held a research placement at Centre for Virus Research, Kenya Medical Research Institute.

Her professional career started JKUAT as a graduate assistant in the department of Medical Microbiology and is currently serving as a lecturer and also sits in various academic committees where she serves in different positions. Dr Ngugi has received a number of research grants and scholarships in her academics and professional career and she has carried out research in early detection and diagnosis of cervical cancer as well as factors affecting uptake of cervical cancer screening. She is involved in community cervical cancer screening awareness and is a volunteer at different Cancer Foundations.

Dr Kariuki is a Postdoctoral Scientist at the KEMRI-Wellcome Trust Research Programme in Kenya, and a Honorary Research Fellow at the Department of Psychiatry, University of Oxford, UK. He is also a fellow at the Global Initiative in Neuropsychiatric Genetics Education in Research (GINGER), Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard University, USA. Dr Kariuki was funded by the British Commonwealth Scholarship Commission to study MSc in Clinical Neurosciences of the Epilepsies at Kings College London from 2010-2011, and by the Wellcome Trust Research Training Fellowship to study a DPhil in Clinical Medicine (specialising in Neuropsychiatric Epidemiology) from 2012-2016 at the Nuffield Department of Medicine, University Oxford, where his DPhil project won a Graduate Research Prize of the Medical Sciences Division. He has a broad research interest in the epidemiology of neurological, neurodevelopmental and mental health disorders in people living in sub-Saharan Africa, including the genetic susceptibility to these disorders.

Dr Kusi is an Immunologist and a Research Fellow with the Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research (NMIMR), University of Ghana, Legon. He is also a part-time lecturer in Biochemistry and faculty of the West African Centre for Cell Biology of Infectious Pathogens (WACCBIP) at the Department of Biochemistry, Cell and Molecular Biology, University of Ghana. Kusi has postgraduate training in biochemistry from the University of Ghana and graduated with PhD in Medicine (Vaccine Immunology) from Leiden University Medical Centre, The Netherlands, in 2012, based on work he did at the Biomedical Primate Research Centre in Rijswijk, The Netherlands. He undertook postdoctoral training between 2012 and 2014 at NMIMR on the development of sero-epidemiological models for predicting malaria transmission intensity in disease endemic areas. His research interests include identification of immunodominant T cell epitopes in Plasmodium antigens for vaccine design and the identification of antibody correlates of immunity against clinical malaria in children.

Dr Akorli is a Research Fellow at the Department of Parasitology, Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research (NMIMR), Ghana. She is also a Postdoctoral Fellow (2016-2019) at the DELTAS Africa funded West African Centre for Cell Biology of Infectious Pathogens (WACCBIP), and the Cambridge-Africa Partnership for Research Excellence (CAPREx) (2017-2018). She holds a BSc degree in Zoology from the University of Ghana and, a PhD in Evolutionary Genetics from the University of Cambridge, UK.

Dr. Akorli has broad interests in mosquito-borne disease and Neglected Tropical Disease research. She aims to contribute to understanding host-vector-parasite interactions by applying the in-depth information that can be obtained from using genomic tools. Her current projects under the WACCBIP and CAPREx Fellowships investigate interactions between environment, mosquito vectors, symbionts, human host and mosquito-borne parasites, to increase knowledge and advance efforts in new strategies for disease control in endemic settings. She is also currently a co-investigator on the NIH-NIAID-funded Tropical Medicine Research Centre grant award at NMIMR.

Jewelna has 11 publications (2011-2017) in peer-reviewed journals, and has participated in several international conferences and workshops. She is passionate about strengthening research and development in Africa, and was an invited speaker at the Grand Challenges Annual Meeting 2017 in Washington DC. Dr. Akorli is also a part-time lecturer at the University of Ghana and currently supervises 2 undergraduate, and 2 MPhil students.

I obtained my bachelor degree in Veterinary Sciences in 2003 ranked 4th in my class (A class of 756 Students) from the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Cairo University, Egypt and followed by Master degree in Immunology in 2006, thesis about "Preparation of Monoclonal Antibodies against Tetanus Toxoid and evaluation of its neutralizing potentials" from the Immunology and Microbiology Department, Cairo University, Egypt and in collaboration with Monoclonal Antibodies Unit in the Holding Company for Biological Products & Vaccines (VACSERA), Ministry of Health, Cairo, Egypt. I was appointed first as Teaching/Research Assistant in 2004 then a Senior Teaching/Research assistant in 2006 till 2008 at Immunology and Microbiology Department, Cairo University, Egypt. In 2008, prestigious Marie-Curie scholarship funded from the European Union gave me the opportunity to improve my knowledge in immunogenetics at Department of Immunology, Medical Faculty, Rostock University, Germany.