On May 4, 2023, the 6th annual ICP North workshop of the ICP programmes Master of Epidemiology at UAntwerpen and Master of Statistics and Data Science at UHasselt took place. This event, hosted by Prof. Jean-Pierre Van geertruyden and Prof. Niel Hens, invited several alumni and/or partners from developing countries of both master’s programmes to share their experiences, research activities, current career paths and contemporary research results in statistics and epidemiology with us. The goal is to learn more about the current research situation in the South and to create new network opportunities in addition.This event is open to all (ICP) students, representatives and researchers interested in international development cooperation, and anyone interested in statistics and epidemiology in developing countries.
Check out the recap on YouTube
Programme
13h00: Registration
13h30: Introduction & welcome
13h40: ICP Master of Epidemiology (Prof. Jean-Pierre van Geertruyden, UAntwerpen) & ICP Master of Statistics (Prof. Niel Hens, UHasselt)
14h20: Invited talk: Hamid Hassen (MEPI)
Grown up in Ethiopia, Hamid Hassen is an Epidemiologist, currently working as R&D researcher at the Flemish Institute of Technological Research (VITO). He studied Master of Epidemiology at the University of Antwerp as a VLIR-UOS scholar from 2017 to 2019. Then after, he joined the Department of Family Medicine and Population Health at the University of Antwerp as doctoral researcher in the SPICES project - Scaling-up Packages of Interventions for cardiovascular disease prevention in Europe and Sub-Saharan Africa. He is finalizing his PHD on ‘Disparities in CVD across contexts and evaluation of effectiveness of preventive interventions in vulnerable communities’ at the University of Antwerp.
His current research looks at risk factors of non-communicable diseases, mainly cardiovascular diseases and cancer, development and validation of prediction models, and implementation of prevention strategies. He also focuses on advances in epidemiological & statistical methods and evaluation of health outcome measurement tools. In his above 5 years of academic and research experience, Hamid authored more than 50 peer reviewed articles in international reputable journals.
14h50: Invited talk: Beryl Anyango Ang’iro (MASTAT)
Beryl Anyango Ang’iro is a tutorial fellow, lecturing applied Statistics at Karatina University, Kenya. She obtained her MSc degree in Applied Statistics (2015) from Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology (JKUAT), Kenya. Beryl is currently pursuing her PhD degree in Biostatistics at Hasselt University with the title ‘Modeling High Dimensional Multivariate Survival Data with Clustering using Frailty and Copula models’. She won a VLIR-OUS scholarship in 2018 to pursue her PhD under the project "Capacity building network in biostatistics for public health innovation in Kenya in collaboration with UHasselt, JKUAT, University of Nairobi (UON) and Kenya Medical Research Institute (KEMRI). After the project ended in 2021, she was granted a BOF Bilateral Scientific Cooperation-grant of Hasselt University to further her research. She has published and presented in international conferences. Her other current research interests include handling data with missingness. At Karatina University, she teaches both introductory and advanced courses on statistical methodologies and analysis (theory and practice) to undergraduate students from different faculties. She is an experienced Lecturer with a demonstrated history of working in the higher education industry. She is skilled in advanced statistical techniques and statistical computing languages for data analysis such as R, SAS, Python, STATA and SPSS.
15h20: Break
15h30: Invited talk: Pieter Cornu (MEPI)
In 2004, Pieter Cornu started the study of Pharmaceutical Sciences at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. Five years later, he graduated as Pharmacist and obtained his Master in Pharmaceutical Sciences with highest distinction. After his graduation, he started working as a pre-doctoral researcher at the department of Clinical Pharmacology & Pharmacotherapy in the UZ Brussel. His interest in clinical pharmacy and clinical decision support resulted in a PhD project for which he obtained a PhD grant from the Agency for Innovation by Science and Technology in Flanders (IWT) in 2009. The PhD project resulted in the implementation of a new context-specific drug-drug interaction alerting system in the hospital. His interest in epidemiology encouraged him to follow the Master in Epidemiology at the Universiteit Antwerpen. He obtained his Master of Epidemiology in 2017 with greatest distinction.
Pieter is currently working as the Clinical decision support coordinator at UZ Brussel and as assistant professor (docent) at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. His research focusses on the development and evaluation of innovative clinical decision support systems and on pharmacoepidemiology.
16h00: Invited talk: Christopher Delgado Ratto (MEPI)
Christopher Delgado Ratto is a docent and senior research fellow at the University of Antwerp in Belgium. Christopher is a molecular epidemiologist who graduated as a biologist in Peru with postgraduate studies in Belgium: in Molecular Biology and Epidemiology and PhD in Medical Sciences. Christopher has been working for 17 years on the molecular epidemiology of malaria. Most of his projects are based in Peru and African countries. His main areas of interest focus on integrating epidemiology and population genetics to investigate the contribution of human mobility to malaria persistence and the spread of drug resistance. Christopher is leading malaria mixed research methods projects in Peru and working with the local and national malaria elimination programs. Christopher is also working on genomic surveillance of SARS-CoV-2 in Peru and African countries. Besides research, Christopher is also a faculty member at Free University of Brussels and adjunct principal researcher at Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia in Peru.
16h30: Panel discussion with invited alumni: 'What is the role of epidemiologists and statisticians in society: perspectives after studies'
17h00: End of workshop (followed by reception)