Sibu Khuluse is passionate about assisting rural high school girls with advice regarding their futures. She is part of a group of professionals whose main objective is to expose young people to career choices and tertiary education opportunities.
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Sibusisiwe Khuluse
Research statistician Sibusisiwe (Sibu) Khuluse has been awarded the prestigious Mandela Rhodes Harvard South Africa Fellowship. She will further her studies at Harvard for a year from the second half of 2010.
"To travel has always been one of my dreams - and this will be my first visit abroad," smiles Khuluse. At the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), she works in the area of statistical research and modelling. She has had a particular affinity for and excellence in maths since high school days. Towards the end of her BSc studies, she started recognising statistics as a tool with which to contribute to finding solutions for some of the problems facing society, the environment and business.
Her late mother, who was a receptionist, had a knack for accounting, while her dad is a machine operator in a factory in KwaZulu-Natal. Khuluse grew up in KwaMashu, a township north of Durban. "A large proportion of my home community does not have tertiary education, with many young girls dropping out of school often due to unplanned pregnancies. My mom ingrained in my brother and me that we should pursue education for broadening our choices in life. That advice will stay with me forever," she says.
At Harvard, Khuluse plans to enrol in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, devoting 50% of her time to statistics and the rest to engineering and applied sciences. The courses are presented at Master's and doctoral levels. "I see the Fellowship as an opportunity to strengthen my academic knowledge, identify the topic for a PhD that I'll pursue soon, and build strong links with our host students - as researchers, we need to build strong networks nationally and internationally to enable knowledge sharing and opportunities for research collaborations."
The Fellowship is intended for people who have shown leadership skills in their chosen fields and who are expected to benefit from advanced study. Because it is a mid-career opportunity, successful candidates have considerable professional experience since obtaining their first degree.
Khuluse is doing her MSc degree at the University of the Witwatersrand on modelling extreme rainfall events in the Western Cape using historical in situ data. "Rainfall is a difficult process to model, particularly because of its evolution in time and in space. One needs both chronological and spatial modelling skills, as well as an understanding of atmospheric processes."
One of the major research projects that Khuluse is currently involved with deals with environmental risk assessment, mainly extreme events, similar to her MSc study topic. "Risk analysis involves quantifying the risk, identifying risk management options and communicating the results to disaster management teams, decision makers and society at large," she explains. Her main focus in this research project is on fire and coastal risks. "The statistical methods we use include time series analysis, as the data are in the form of on-site measurements regularly spaced over a specific time interval. We also have to apply appropriate statistical methods to compensate for incomplete data and to incorporate related information," she notes.
Although her experience in complex estimation techniques has been applied in the environmental field, the same tools can be used for modelling the spatial and time patterns of viruses and diseases, such as malaria, cholera and HIV/Aids incidence and prevalence. In economics, spatial statistical tools are used for understanding the spatial distribution of the wealth of a country, including monitoring economic development in certain areas.
Khuluse is passionate about assisting rural high school girls with advice regarding their futures. "There seems to be a perception among learners in townships and rural villages that maths and science are only for 'whizz kids'; they regard these subjects as beyond their capabilities. I find it worrying that young girls show a lack of confidence - rather than capacity - to consider careers in maths, science and engineering; this self doubt undermines their opportunities. I am part of a group of professionals whose main objective is to expose young people to career choices and tertiary education opportunities. This is my contribution to science and the betterment of young lives within my circle of reach," she concludes.
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