Research Profiles
Prof Johan Meyer
MeyerJH@ufs.ac.za
+27 51 401 2428
Bloemfontein Campus
Prof Meyer investigates 0-primitivity in matrix near-rings, in particular whether the 0-primitivity of a matrix near-ring implies the 0-primitivity of the underlying near-ring. This a long-standing open problem and has been solved in certain restricted cases. He also investigated zero-symmetric simple near-rings with identity. Again, there is an open problem, namely whether such near-rings are always equiprime. The result is known to be true in some cases. The solution to this problem has implications for radical theory in near-rings. Furthermore, he continued the study of the so-called 1-2-3 problem. This concerns the cardinality of the symmetric difference of certain (finite) sets. There is a clear conjecture which is believed to be true by everybody working on this problem, but a proof in the general case is still lacking. The solution to this combinatorial problem has implications for coding theory.
Prof Tomas Vetrik
VetrikT@ufs.ac.za
+27 51 401 2912
Bloemfontein Campus
Prof Vetrik's favourite topics include metric dimension, partition dimension and topological indices. These topics have applications in chemistry and computer science, since graphs can represent various networks and chemical structures and lead to a variety of publications in these areas. He mostly usescombinatorial and algebraic methods in his proofs.
Dr Ur Koumba
KoumbaUA@ufs.ac.za+27 58 718 5303
Qwaqwa Campus
Dr Ur Koumba has recently been investigating the properties of Riesz operators defined on the ultrapowers of ordered Banach algebras (OBAs). His research interests in the field of mathematics focus more on operator and spectral theory in functional analysis through OBAs, topology, stochastic process, control theory, and optimisation. As Dr Koumba also holds a master’s degree in financial economics, his topical research in financial mathematics aimed at providing new evidence and insights into the exchange rate dynamics by analysing exchange rate behaviour in relation to risk and uncertainty. He is amongst the few in South Africa who specialises in cryptocurrency portfolio optimisation.
Dr Albert Kriel
KrielAJ@ufs.ac.za+27 51 401 2190
Bloemfontein Campus
Dr Kriel's research area is numerical analysis, with specific focus on hyperbolic problems.
Dr Edgard Ngounda
NgoundaE@ufs.ac.za+27 51 401 2329
Bloemfontein Campus
Dr Ngounda conducts research on numerical methods for partial differential equations (PDEs), in particular some analytical investigations and numerical experiments using finite differences, spline approximation and spectral methods for the parameter. He also investigates numerical methods for option pricing in the field of computational finance.
Dr Renier Jansen
JansenRS@ufs.ac.za+27 51 401 7892
Bloemfontein Campus
Dr Jansen, a categorical topologist, studies dual closure operators and their interaction with left and right constant subcategories. He also investigates Kurosh-Amitsur type radicals, as usually studied in algebra, on an arbitrary category to find links with his other research.
Dr Elizabeth Maritz
MaritzECM@ufs.ac.za+27 51 401 9935
Bloemfontein Campus
Dr Maritz is a graph theorist specializing in variations of metric and partition dimension, graph colourings and hereditary properties. Graph theory has many applications, and her recent work on resolving vertex covers has been applied to the problem of determining the optimal placement of travelling wave fault location (TWFL) detectors, in order to accurately detect and locate faults on power grids.
Dr Narcisse Loufouma Makala
LoufoumaMakalaNR@ufs.ac.za+27 58 718 5202
Qwaqwa Campus
Dr Narcisse Loufouma Makala conducts research on set-valued mappings, continuous selections, and their applications and Absolute Retracts (AR), Absolute Extensors (AE) and Paraconvex sets.
Prof Jeandrew Brink
BrinkJ2@ufs.ac.za+27 51 401 2763
Bloemfontein Campus
Prof Jeandrew Brink investigates various theoretical aspects of testing general relativity. Her work
entails introducing properties of homogenous functions to describe geodesics around the Kerr
Metric and investigating the resonant effects around black holes. Some of the implications are the
proving of some empirically known results in the self-force problem and assisting in general
perturbation theory around black holes.
Dr Yibeltal Terefe
TerefeYA@ufs.ac.za+27 51 401 9581
Bloemfontein Campus
Dr Terefe's field of interest is the application of Mathematics to population dynamics and epidemiology, vector-borne infections, Mathematics motivated by biological applications, dynamical systems, PDEs, Integral equations, nonstandard finite difference methods.
Dr Christian Budde
BuddeCJ@ufs.ac.za+27 51 401 9789
Bloemfontein Campus
Dr Budde's research concentrates on evolution equations, operator semigroups and networks as part of functional analysis. Especially, he is interested in well-posedness of abstract Cauchy problems, extrapolation spaces and perturbation theory of operator semigroups. Non-strongly continuous operator semigroups are of special interest in this context. Also non-autonomous evolution equations are part of his current research.