Biography

Bhekisipho Twala is a prominent academic and administrator in the field of Artificial Intelligence and Data Science. He currently serves as the Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Digital Transformation) at the Tshwane University of Technology in Pretoria, South Africa. Prior to this appointment, Twala was the Executive Dean of the Faculty of Engineering and Built Environment and Professor in Artificial Intelligence and Data Science at the Durban University of Technology. He also spent two years as the Director of the School of Engineering at the University of South Africa.

Besides, Twala did his post-doctoral research fellowship at Brunel University in the UK, mainly focussing on empirical software engineering research and looking at data quality issues in software engineering. Currently, his work involves promoting and conducting research in artificial intelligence within the electrical and mining engineering science fields and developing novel and innovative solutions to crucial research problems in these areas.

Twala’s research focuses on promoting and conducting research in Artificial Intelligence within the Big Data Analytics field, as well as developing novel and innovative solutions to key research problems in this area.

His broad research interests include image and signal processing, multivariate statistics, applied and theoretical machine learning, knowledge discovery and reasoning with uncertainty, and the interface between statistics and computing. Also, he has particular research and teaching interests in artificial intelligence (and machine learning) applications in finance, medicine, psychology, software engineering and most recently in robotics.

Prof Twala is the author and co-author of more than 180 journal articles, book chapters and other publications and has made more than 50 keynote and related presentations at national and international forums. Twala’s many honours include receiving the 2016 NSTF/SOUTH32 TW Kambule (Research & Outputs) award and nominated as one of the Top 75 World Academic Data Leaders by the Chief Data Office magazine in 2022. He was also Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Semantic and Infrastructure Services. Currently, he is the Regional Editor of the International Journal of Big Data Intelligence; an Associate Editor of the Intelligent Data Analysis Journal, Journal of Computers, International Journal of Advanced Information Science and Technology, International Journal of Big Data Intelligence, Journal of Image and Data Fusion, Journal of Information Processing Systems, International Journal of Internet of Things & Its Applications.

Prof Twala is also a Professional Scientist and a fellow of the Royal Statistical Society. Other professional memberships include the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM); the Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport in South Africa (CITSA), Senior Member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), member of the International Association of Engineers (IAENG); South African Council for Automation; and International Federation of Automatic Control (IFAC).

Twala received a Bachelor’s degree in Economics and Statistics from the University of Swaziland, a Post Graduate Certificate in Statistics, and later an MSc in Statistics from the University of Southampton (UK). He further graduated with a PhD in Machine Learning and Statistical Science from the Open University in Milton Keynes (UK).