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Developing Collaborations with the Africa Centre for Population Health

3 December 2015

Dave Concannon at Africa Centre

Dr Ed Manley has been visiting the Africa Centre for Population Health in Mtubatuba, South Africa this week, seeking to develop new opportunities for research collaboration.

Located in rural South Africa, the Africa Centre (www.africacentre.ac.za) is a centre of excellence for research into HIV and TB transmission in Africa. For over 15 years, the Africa Centre has built up an extensive collection of demographic and socioeconomic data about the local area, providing them detailed insight into population and the health of the area.

CASA and the Africa Centre have begun collaboration through a project that will see the development of a new data dashboard. Building on data collected over the last three years of an HIV intervention trial, the dashboard will provide a visual interface to data interrogation functionality, allowing researchers and health workers better insight into the impact of the trial. This work has been funded by the i-sense (www.i-sense.org.uk) project at UCL, and will run for one year. Dave Concannon, a former student on the MSc Smart Cities, is working as a Research Assistant on the project, spending six months in Mtubatuba and six months in London. Dave is just coming up to the end of a productive two month stay in Mtubatuba. The project is being co-managed at the Africa Centre by Dr Kobus Herbst, Deputy Director of the centre.

During Ed’s visit this week much of the focus has been on expanding the potential for collaboration between CASA and the Africa Centre. These opportunities expand across CASA’s strengths in big data analysis, embedding of sensor technology, and development of novel visual analytics. Steven Gray will also travel to the Africa Centre later in 2016 to seek further opportunities for collaboration.