A total of 305 students from 32 different African countries have graduated from the AIMS Diploma Programme. Profiles of selected AIMS alumni are included below.
Zakariya MohamedZakariya Mohamed was among the first intake of AIMS graduates in August 2003. He completed his research essay on Epidemics on Scale-free networks under the supervision of Gareth Witten. After completing the AIMS Postgraduate Diploma he enrolled for a PhD in Statistics at the University of the Western Cape. During his studies, Zakariya provided consultancy services to the local universities. After completing his PhD in 2009, Zakariya returned to Sudan where he was appointed as the Head of the Department of Statistics in the Faculty of Mathematical Sciences, University of Khartoum.
Yves SemegniCameroonian Yves Semegni completed his PhD 3 years after leaving AIMS in 2005. His Masters programme in Pure Mathematics at Stellenbosch University was upgraded to a PhD. Yves worked as a tutor at AIMS before moving into the Biomathematics field. He is now a post-doctoral fellow at the Computational Biology Group at the University of Cape Town.
Angelina Lutambi grew up in a family with 9 children in rural Tanzania. Her parents were small-scale farmers with little formal education but they encouraged her to go to school, where she clearly had great aptitude for mathematics. Angelina had to finance her own schooling, and that of her siblings by selling cooldrinks. Her hard work paid off when she was awarded a grant to study at Dar Es Salaam University. She graduated from AIMS in June 2004 and then completed a Masters at Stellenbosch University investigating the properties of models of the spread of HIV/AIDS. She returned to Tanzania in 2007, and now works as a research scientist for the Ifakara Health Institute in Tanzania. She is also a doctoral student at the Swiss Tropical Institute, Basel University.
Emmanuel OsalusiNigerian born Emmanuel Osalusi completed the AIMS postgraduate Diploma in 2004 after which he went on to complete a Masters at the University of Limpopo. He has recently completed his PhD at the University of Herriot Watt, Scotland and is now employed by Total Gas and Power, UK as a numerical hydrodynamic engineer. Emmanuel is researching the combined effect of wave and tidal forces on tidal turbines at a Marine Energy Converter site. Until now, the data sets required to study the combined effect of these elements have not been available. Emmanuel has published 11 articles.
Daphney Singo was born on the 3rd of February 1983 in Thoyandou, South Africa. After completing the Advanced Mathematical Sciences Programme (AMSP) and the Postgraduate Diploma in Mathematical Sciences at AIMS, she went on to study towards a Master of Science in Experimental Nuclear Physics at the University of Cape Town. She was awarded a a Mandela Rhodes Scholarship. Although Daphney had originally planned to continue studying mathematics, her time at AIMS allowed her to realise her passion for nuclear physics. Daphney is now studying towards a PhD at Stellenbosch University. “I am determined to acquire all the necessary skills required to lift this great nation to greater heights; and to make it my responsibility to see that other women are motivated to acquire scientific knowledge and skills.”
After graduating from AIMS in 2004, Tendai Mugwagwa completed her Masters in Applied Mathematics at the University of Cape Town in 2005. She recently completed her PhD at the University of Utrecht, Netherlands where her research was on mathematical modelling and data analysis of T cell dynamics in lymphopenic conditions (understanding disease dynamics during HIV infection). She currently has a post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Rochester.
Shehu was born in Nigeria in 1980. He completed the Diploma programme in 2004 and went on to register for a Masters at UCT. He then completed the Advanced Diploma (Part III) and a PhD at Cambridge University and has now been appointed as a post-doctorate at the ICTP, Trieste, Italy.