Bio: Prof Motsa is currently serving as the Dean of the Faculty of Science and Engineering at the University of Eswatini. He holds Honorary Professorships at the UKZN and Wits University and is a Professor Extraordinaire at UNISA. He is a distinguished Applied Mathematician and a founding member of the Kingdom of Eswatini Academy of Science (KEAS). He specializes in the development of numerical methods for solving mathematical models in Science and Engineering. With over 200 publications and more than 5900 citations, Prof Motsa is an influential researcher and serves on the editorial boards of prestigious journals. He has contributed significantly to the Southern Africa Mathematical Sciences Association (SAMSA) as Vice President and President. He has supervised numerous Postdocs, Doctoral and Master’s students. He is passionate about integrating AI and technology into education and research, regularly sharing his insights through his column "AI Corner" in the Eswatini Observer.

Bio: Prof Inger Fabris-Rotelli is currently an associate professor in the Department of Statistics, University of Pretoria. She has been at the Department of Statistics since 2004. She holds a PhD Mathematical Sciences, obtained in 2013, an MSc Applied Mathematics, a double BSc (Hons) in Mathematical Statistics and Applied Mathematics and a BSc Applied Mathematics. She has supervised 68 honours, 26 Masters and 7 PhD students to completion, and is currently supervising 10 honours, 6 Masters and 7 doctoral students, and has a particular passion for postgraduate supervision. She has published 33 peer-reviewed journal articles, 26 peer-reviewed conference proceedings papers and 1 book chapter.

She was on the executive of the South African Statistical Association (SASA) from 2012 – 2018, and from 2019-2024 sat as a director on the ICCSSA (Institute of Certificated and Chartered Statisticians in South Africa) board. She is the immediate past-president of SASA and CEO of ICCSSA. She is also a member of ISI and IMS internationally, and the Golden Key Society, SASA, SAMS, GISSA, SAMSA, GASA and RLadies Johannesburg co-chair locally. She is a SACNASP council member elected 2021 – 2025 as well as a SACNASP registered scientist. Her research interests are in spatial statistics and GIS, as well as remote sensing and general image processing, including spatial epidemiology and criminology.

She has a number of countrywide research collaboration group, namely SEPIMOD (Spatial Epidemiological Modelling) and StatSNetSA (a capacity development research group for building doctoral supervision skills in academic Statistics in South Africa and further in general supporting the young academics in Statistics in South Africa). Both these groups have resulted in a number of publications, postgraduate student growth and young academic development. She has a National Research Foundation Y2 rating in recognition of her research.

Prof Fabris-Rotelli is an Abe Bailey Fellow (2007 tour award), is a 2018 fellow of the TUKS Young Researcher Leadership Program (TYRLP), and was selected as a BRICS Young Scientist 2020 in Artificial Intelligence. She received the University of Pretoria Exceptional Young Researcher award in 2023.

Bio: Dr Ashleigh Jane Hutchinson is a lecturer in Applied Mathematics at the University of Manchester, UK. Prior to this post, she was a Newton International Fellow, based at the University of Cambridge, UK. She was awarded her PhD in 2016 from the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, SA. Her main research area is in fluid mechanics modelling, with particular focus on low Reynolds number, non-Newtonian flows. She employs a variety of approaches to solving problems within this area including using laboratory experiments to test theoretical predictions. She is passionate about interdisciplinary reseach, and enjoys working with researchers from different fields..

Bio: Abdul H Kara completed all his studies at Wits University and in all, but one year, has been at Wits from Junior Lecturer through to Professor; the one year being served as a school teacher. His PhD thesis involved a range of topics around the Symmetries of Differential Equations, Euler-Lagrange equations and their relationship with Conservation Laws. Abdul has published with collaborators from China, the US, Russia, Pakistan and with his students from SA and abroad. He continues to apply his work in mathematical physics, engineering and relativity and extend his ideas to Discrete Equations and Fractional Differential Equations.

Bio: Jan Nordström is Professor Emeritus in Computational Mathematics at the Department of Mathematics, Linköping University, Sweden, a Distinguished Visiting Professor at the Department of Mathematics and Applied Mathematics, University of Johannesburg, South Africa and an Honorary Professor in Computational Mathematics at University of Cape Town, South Africa. He is also a member of the Academy of Science of South Africa. His main interest is in Initial Boundary Value Problems (IBVPs), and in particular the fundamental effect of boundary and interface conditions on well-posedness and stability. He stresses the necessity to understand the IBVP during the development of numerical approximations.