The tables below contains all current research fields offered within the School of Computing (SOC) at Unisa, as well as supervision slots open per supervisor.
| Internal Supervisors | Email @ unisa.dot.ac.dot.za | Research area | Master's supervision slots open | PhD supervision slots open |
| Prof Isaac Osunmakinde | osunmio | Machine Learning and Computational Intelligence - Robotics and Agent systems, Environmental Safety, Sensor and Telecommunication Networks, Business Intelligence, & Computational Sciences | 3 | 4 |
| Prof Jan H Kroeze | kroezjh | Humanities-enriched Information Systems; Digital Humanities/Humanities Computing; Hermeneutics in IS; African Hermeneutics and IS; IS Research Theory and Philosophy; Digitizing African Games; How can digital African games be used to improve computer literacy in African communities?; Africanisation of IS; Transformation/Africanisation/Decoloniality and IS; The impact of internet radio on dispersed communities. Please contact Prof Kroeze if you need more information regarding these topics. | 0 | 0 |
| Prof Kirstin Krauss | krauske | Critical Social Theory, ICTs and Education, ICTs and community engagement, Ethnography, Information Systems Leadership, Information Systems Theory and Theory development, Supervision Practices in Information Systems | 1 | 4 |
| Prof Elmarie Kritzinger | kritze | Information Security Education | 0 | 0 |
| Prof Ian Sanders | sandeid | Algorithms; Computational Geometry; Image Processing; Computer Science Education | 2 | 3 |
| Prof Judy van Biljon | vbiljja | Data science empowers citizens, civil servants and entrepreneurs by helping them extract knowledge from data. Our focus is on the emerging field of human-centred data science, mainly on data visualisation, data user-interfaces/ HCI and open data access and use. This exciting research area offers an opportunity to do locally relevant research with social and economic impact. Example topics: (1) Developing and evaluating open data visualisations to help citizens understand critical governance issues (e.g. municipalmoney.gov.za), (2) No/low-code interfaces for data manipulation and learning (e.g. OpenRefine, scratch.mit.edu), (3) Integrating citizen-generated and open government data for better development decision-making (e.g. planning new public transport routes or reducing pollution). | 6 | 0 |
| Prof Serestina Viriri | evirirs1 | Computer Vision, Image Processing, and Pattern Recognition. This research area includes (but not limited to): Image processing related areas such as (Biometrics (biometrics security), Video Processing, Surveillance, Medical Imaging, Nuclear Medicine, etc.). Several Image Segmentation techniques (Graph Cut, Level Set), Feature Extraction algorithms and Classification techniques such as Deep Learning are explored. | 5 | 5 |
| Prof Felix Bankole | bankofo | Expert Systems, Decision Support Systems, Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis, Database Systems, IT & Productivity, Telecommunication Systems | 1 | 1 |
| Prof Alfred Coleman | colema | ICT in health (e-health) and Business Informatics & Knowledge Management | 0 | 0 |
| Prof Marianne Loock | loockm | Information Security Awareness; Information Security and Business Intelligence; Access Control in a Data Mining environment | 0 | 0 |
| Prof Peter Mkhize | mkhizpl | Knowledge management, Strategic Informations System | 0 | 1 |
| Prof Ernest Mnkandla | mnkane | The world today is overwhelmed with gigabytes of data that are collected and stored in various forms (structured and unstructured). The nature of our real-world problems today is characterised by very complex processes in which mathematical reasoning or traditional modelling are simply inadequate, such complexities are a result of some uncertainties in these processes due to their stochastic nature. Software engineering processes belong to this category of complex processes.
In order to improve the quality of software, many software development tasks within software engineering processes can be formulated as learning problems and approaches in terms of machine learning algorithms. This research focuses on the application of machine learning algorithms to model the: 1. Software development projects processes. 2. Software delivery pipeline processes and 3. Big data analytics in a smart cities context.
| 3 | 3 |
| Prof Bobby Tait | taitbl | Network Security, Voice Recognition, Biometrics, Applied Encryption Technologies; Forensics | 2 | 2 |
| Prof Hossana Twinomurinzi | twinoh | E-government, ICT for development (ICT4D), e-entrepreneurship (ICT in Entrepreneurship), mobile app development (from a sociotechnical dimension) | 0 | 0 |
| Prof Mc Donald van der Merwe | vdmertm | e-Learning, m-Learning, Psycho-physiological aspects of Human
Computer Interaction, Open Source movement | 0 | 0 |
| Prof Etienne van der Poel | evdpoel | Computational Creativity, Machine Learning. Artificial Intelligence | 2 | 1 |
| Ms H Abdullah | abdulh | Governance, Risk Management, Information Security and Compliance | 0 | 0 |
| Mr Danie Bisschoff | dbischof | Designing Banking Technology for the Aged and Disabled | 2 | 0 |
| Dr B Chipangura | chipab | Mobile Centric Access to Information; M-Learning; E-Learning; Software usability and user experience (Human Computer Interaction)
| 0 | 1 |
| Dr Adele Da Veiga | dveiga | Information security culture / cyber security culture / data privacy culture / POPIA culture
| 0 | 1 |
| Mr Ken Halland | hallakj | Applied Logic and Description Logics | 3 | 0 |
| Dr Vincent Horner | hornevz | Areas: e-health. epidemiology research. primary health care. public health medicine. quality assurance and clinical practice guidelines. community outreach primary health care. m-health. ICT4Health.
Preference: I would like to work with students that are interested in projects that have an indepth engagement with the health system, rather than a superficial one. | 0 | 0 |
| Dr Grant Howard | howargr | IT-related Organisational Change, Organisational Transformation and IS/IT, Green Information Systems (Green IS), Green Information Technology (Green IT), Green Computing, ICT for Sustainability (ICT4S), Information Systems (IS) for community engagement (IS4CE). | 0 | 0 |
| Dr Jan Mentz | mentzjc | Enterprise Architecture, Enterprise Modelling, Enterprise Architecture Frameworks, reference architectures, cloud computing, Enterprise Governance and information systems in business. | 0 | 0 |
| Mr Mathias Mujinga | mujinm | Information Security, Usable Security, Cloud Computing Security | 5 | 0 |
| Mr Elisha Ochola | ocholeo | Routing Protocols in Mobile Wireless Ad Hoc Networks, Ad Hoc Networks Security | 0 | 0 |
| Dr Marthie Schoeman | schoema | Computing education, visualization, ODL
| 0 | 0 |
| Dr Shawren Singh | singhs | digital-government | 1 | 0 |
| Mr Sam Ssemugabi | ssemus | Human-Computer Interaction, e-Learning, e-Skills, e-Service quality, Application of mobile technology | 0 | 0 |
| Dr W van Staden | vstadwjc | Information Security, Privacy, Anonymity, Digital Forensics | 0 | 0 |
| Dr Bester Chimbo | chimbb | Child-Computer Interaction; Designing for children with children and other special user groups; Design of Technology for Education; ICT4D. | 0 | 0 |
| Mr Cyrille Dongmo | dongmc | Combining semi-formal and formal specification techniques - Requirements Engineering - Goal-Oriented Requirements Engineering (GORE) Methods - Formal Software Requirement Specification with Z/Object-Z - User Requirements Notation (URN). | 1 | 0 |
| Mrs Petra le Roux | lrouxp | ODL e-Learning and e-Assessment;
Computer Science education : Programming;
Psychological Aspects of Computing and Information Systems
| 1 | 0 |
| Mr Lindelani Nxumalo | nxumals | Knowledge Management | 1 | 0 |
| Mr Colin Pilkington | pilkicl | Computing education, Virtual learning environments | 0 | 0 |
| Mrs Dorothy Scholtz | scholid | e-Learning, Project Management, Information Systems, ODL | 0 | 0 |
| Ms Anitta Thomas | thomaa | Trust Negotiation in Information Security | 0 | 0 |
| Mrs Sreedevi Vallabhapurapu | vallas | Fabrication of organic computer memory devices | 0 | 0 |
| Mrs Corne Van Staden | vstadcj1 | User experience, m-learning, e-learning and eModeration | 0 | 0 |
| External Supervisors | Research area | Master's supervision slots open | PhD supervision slots open |
| Prof Marlien Herselman | Innovation models in health, education and business information systems, Community informatics, ICT4D, MHealth & eHealth, skills transfer, deploying and integrating technology to improve lives. Email is MHerselman@csir.co.za | 1 | 1 |
| Prof Mariki Eloff | Computer and Information Security, Project Management: eloffmm@unisa.ac.za | 0 | 0 |
| Prof Les Labuschagne | IT Project, Programme and Portfolio Management: llabus@unisa.ac.za | 0 | 0 |
| Prof Hugo Lotriet | Epistemic issues in IS, Socio-technical systems, ICT4D: South African students who are actively involved in projects that involve the introduction, adoption and use of technology by South African communities, preferably in a developmental context and who wish to conduct some academic research within such a context. The nature of the research projects will have to be qualitative. lotrihh@unisa.ac.za | 1 | 1 |
| Prof Nixon Muganda Ochara | E-Government, Open (Data) Innovations, Business Analytics & Data Monetization, Digital Transformation, ICT Governance; Inter-Organizational IS. Contact: nixon.muganda@gmail.com | 3 | 3 |
| Prof Richard Naidoo | Scientific computing, technology enhanced learning and simulations; viz modelling in Communications systems; naidor@unisa.ac.za | 1 | 1 |
| Prof Laurette Pretorius | pretol@unisa.ac.za - Natural language processing and computational linguistics;
Natural language technology for under-resourced languages;
The role of natural language and multilingual natural language processing in
? semantic computing, semantic technologies, including ontology development;
? knowledge extraction from text;
? controlled natural language for domain specific precise machine translation and language generation. :
| 1 | 1 |
| Prof Karen Renaud | Behavioural Security; Knowledge Visualisation; Ethnographic studies of security-related behaviours
Alternative Authentication; Human Behaviour and Information Security; Privacy of IoT; Adoption of Security Tools
Contact email:
cyber4humans@gmail.com | 1 | 1 |
| Prof Andre Van der Poll | vdpolja@unisa.ac.za :
Formal Specification Techniques, Automated Reasoning, Combining Formal and Semi-formal Specification Techniques, Formal Methods in Business Applications; Formalisms in Cloud Computing (CC); Formalisms in Business Intelligence (BI) | 3 | 3 |
| Prof Zengzhui Wang | wangz@unisa.ac.za:
Artificial Intelligence: Neural network, Particle Swarm Optimization, Ant colony optimization algorithms, Genetic Algorithms, Energy (power system) Optimization, and Evolutionary Multi-Objective Optimization;
Intelligent Control: Optimal Control, Fuzzy and/or Neural Network Control, Fault Diagnosis and Fault Tolerant Control;
Encryption, Complex networks, etc?
| 1 | 2 |