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14 December 2022 | Story André Damons | Photo André Damons
Dr Michael Pienaar, Senior Lecturer and specialist in the UFS Department of Paediatrics and Child Health being presented to the acting Chancellor by his supervisor Prof Stephen Brown.

A lecturer from the University of the Free State (UFS) says the need to improve the care of seriously ill children is a vital part of reducing preventable deaths and diseases, and this led him to investigate the use of artificial neural networks to develop models for the prediction of patient outcomes in children with severe illness. The study was done for his PhD thesis. 

This forms the basis for the PhD thesis of Dr Michael Pienaar, Senior Lecturer and specialist in the UFS Department of Paediatrics and Child Health, called, The Development and Validation of Predictive Models for Paediatric Critical Illness in Children in Central South Africa using Artificial Neural Networks. His thesis reports the development and testing of several machine learning models designed to help healthcare workers identify seriously ill children early in a range of resource-limited settings. Combining a systematic literature search and Delphi technique with clinical data from 1 032 participants, this research led to significant progress towards implementable models for community health workers in clinical practice.

Care for critically ill children is a mission and calling 

Dr Pienaar graduated with a PhD specialising in Paediatrics on Monday (12 December) during the Faculty of Health Sciences’ December graduation ceremony. It took him three years to complete this degree. His supervisor was Prof Stephen Brown, Principal Specialist and Head of the Division of Paediatric Cardiology in the Department of Paediatrics and Child Health in the Faculty of Health Sciences at the UFS. Prof Nicolaas Luwes and Dr EC George were his co-supervisors. 

“I have been working in paediatric critical care since 2019 and see the care of critically ill children as my mission and calling in life. At the outset of the project, I was interested in approaches to complex phenomena and wanted to investigate new methods for tackling these in healthcare. 

“I have been interested in technology since childhood and in collaborating with other disciplines since I joined the university in 2019. Machine learning seemed like a great fit that could incorporate these interests and yield meaningful clinical results,” explains Dr Pienaar the reason why he chose this topic for his thesis.

He hopes that, in time, this work will lead to the implementation of integrated machine learning models to improve care and clinical outcomes for children in South Africa. From a scholarship perspective, he continues, his hope is that this work draws interest to this field in clinical research and encourages a move towards incorporating these new methods, as well as skills in areas such as coding and design in the armamentarium of a new generation of clinicians.

Medicine chooses you

According to Dr Pienaar, he always had broad interests, of which medicine is one. “I am very grateful to have found my way in medicine and am humbled and privileged to be allowed to walk with children and their families on a difficult and important journey. I believe this profession will choose you and put you where you are needed if you give it time and are prepared to listen.”

He describes graduating as a complicated ending to this period of his life and the beginning of a next chapter. He was humbled by the graduation ceremony. 

“It was wonderful to graduate with undergraduates and postgraduates in my profession – I felt great pride and solidarity joining these new colleagues and specialists in taking the oath. I am certainly relieved, proud, excited, and happy. I am also very grateful to the university, my promotors, colleagues, friends, and family for supporting me through this process. I must confess, it is also slightly bittersweet, I loved working on this and do miss it, but look forward to the next exciting project. 

“I would like to thank my Head of Department, Dr (Nomakhuwa) Tabane, my supervisors, my family and friends once again. I would also like to acknowledge and thank the National Research Foundation (NRF) as well as the University of the Free State for their assistance with funding this research.”

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Top PhD graduates hailed for excellent research in development and historical studies
2017-07-11

 Description: Top PhD graduates hailed for excellent research  Tags: Top PhD graduates hailed for excellent research  

Prof Melanie Walker and Prof Ian Phimister

The Centre for Research on Higher Education and Development and the International Studies Group celebrated its PhD graduates on 26 June 2017. The four graduates were joined by their PhD promoters Prof Ian Phimister and Prof Melanie Walker, the Dean of the Faculty of Economic and Management Sciences, and their families, who came from far and wide, as well as various faculty academics and staff. Their areas of study ranged between Development Studies and Africa Studies, exploring issues that make a significant impact on the Southern African region and the continent as a whole.

In the Faculty of Economic and Management Sciences, specialising in Development Studies, Dr Faith Mkwananzi, promoted by Prof Merridy Wilson-Strydom, explored the lives and educational aspirations of marginalised migrant youth, a case study in Johannesburg. She focused on the complex nature of the daily lives and experiences of marginalised migrant youth and the complexities that influence the formation and achievement of educational aspirations in contexts of vulnerability and disadvantage. The study provides compelling evidence for policy and practice that can make the lives of marginalised young migrants better.

A focus on teaching and learning in Zimbabwean universities with a focus on quality as a human development, was what Dr Patience Mukwambo, put her research efforts into. Her work makes an original contribution to national, continental, and international debates on conceptualising and operationalising the quality of teaching and learning in higher education. She successfully developed a significant alternative approach to understanding what quality in higher education teaching and learning entails, the factors that influence the realisation of quality as she theorises it, and the overall importance for human development and human well-being in universities and society.

Dr Bothwell Manyonga, who also specialised in Development Studies, examined the broader debates on the purposes and practices of teaching and learning in higher education with a case study at two South African universities, with an emphasis on principles of social justice and equity. In the thesis, he developed a model that proposes grounds for (re)thinking sociology teaching and learning to address how the capabilities approach and dominant human capital theory might complement each other in higher education and curriculum development. This takes into account both the instrumental aim of employment, which is of concern to students, as well as the intrinsic goods of critical discourse and personal development.

In the Faculty of the Humanities, with a specialisation in Africa Studies, Dr Abraham Mlombo’s doctoral research explored the relationship between Southern Rhodesia and South Africa 1923-1953, examining the ‘special relationship’ between the two countries from the former’s perspective, highlighting the complexity of the ties between them by examining (high) political relations, economic links and social and cultural ties. “It is through Abraham’s research that for the first time, black experiences of both sides of the colonial border are detailed,” said Prof Phimister.

In congratulating the graduates, Prof Melanie Walker expressed that a lot of hard work was put into training the PhD candidates and they had without a doubt produced work that was of the highest level, at international standards.

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