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UCT RESEARCH REPORT 2012
External collaborations: Ayton works with external
collaborators on collecting, processing, storing and
visualizing African human genetics variation data. He
developed a population genetics module in Galaxy
for mining the data. He is also supporting German
collaborators on exon array and RNA-Seq data analysis. As
part of a Swiss-SA collaboration, Gaston Mazandu’s work
on predicting functions for
M. tuberculosis
hypothetical
proteins is being fed into the TubercuList and Swiss-Prot
databases.
Additional Achievements in the CBIO Group
Nicola Mulder has been awarded ~$12 million by the NIH
through their H3Africa initiative to lead the development
of a Pan-African Bioinformatics network involving over
35 partners in 15 African countries and the USA. The
network will be responsible for providing bioinformatics
infrastructure to support the NIH and Wellcome Trust
funded Human Heredity and Health in Africa projects and
for building bioinformatics capacity on the continent. Nicola
was promoted to full member of the IIDMM in 2011 and
received her first NRF rating at B3. She was also voted in as
the next President of the African Society for Bioinformatics
and Computational Biology, and joined the African Institute
for Mathematical Sciences Executive Committee.
Dr Darren Martin received an NRF rating of B3, and was
invited to give a plenary talk at the fourth plant virus
ecology network conference in Montpellier, France. In
addition, his PhD student Aderito’s first first-author paper
was selected for the cover of the Journal of Virology.
Finally, Darren’s computer program appeared in the virus
epidemic disaster movie Contagion!
Group Members
Staff
Associate Professor Nicola Mulder (Head of Group)
Dr Darren Martin (Senior Lecturer)
Ayton Meinjies (Software Developer)
Gerrit Botha (Software Developer)
Cashifa Karriem (Administrator)
Students
Postdoctoral
2
Doctoral
5
Master’s
8
Honours
4
Undergraduate
Total
Contact details
Physical address:
UCT Computational Biology Group
Room N1.05
Werner Beit North Building Basement
Institute of Infectious Disease and Molecular Medicine
Anzio Rd
Observatory
Postal address:
UCT Computational Biology Group
Institute of Infectious Disease and Molecular Medicine
University of Cape Town Health Sciences Campus
Anzio Rd
Observatory
7925
South Africa
e-mail: info@cbio.uct.ac.za
web: http://www.cbio.uct.ac.za/
Tel: 021-406 6176
Fax: 021-650 6068
Clinical Laboratory Sciences
Division Of Forensic Medicine And
Toxicology
(Including the Gender, Health and Justice Research Unit)
Head of Division: Professor Lorna J. Martin
Divisional Profile
A range of activities related to the role of Forensic Medicine
in public policy and health promotion are being pursued.
These relate specifically to violence against women and
children, the role of drugs and toxins in deaths, and
firearm injuries. The provision of a sustainable database on
violence and injury in the Cape Town Metropole is being
implemented as an urgent research priority. We provide
inputs into the National & Provincial Injury Mortality
Surveillance System (NIMSS & PIMSS).
A large component of operational activity of the Division of
Forensic Medicine is that of service delivery. The academic
staff are on the joint staff establishment of the University
of Cape Town and the PGWC: Health; Forensic Pathology
Services. This is a fairly new programme of the PGWC:
Health, established in April 2006, when the responsibility
of “mortuary services” was transferred to the Province
from SAPS. We are responsible for the medico-legal
investigation of death of all persons who die within the