Georgina is a lecturer at the department of Statistical Sciences at the University of Cape Town since 2019. She received a PhD in Operations Research in 2018 from Stellenbosch University. Her primary research area is Operations Research, with a focus on the application of mathematical optimization techniques to solve complex decision-making problems. She has a particular interest in the field of cutting and packing problems, and her research is centered on the use and development of metaheuristic approaches.

Stephan is a lecturer at the Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science at Stellenbosch University, and he obtained his PhD earlier this year at Wageningen University in the Netherlands. For his PhD he developed machine learning frameworks to account for complex data issues in digital soil mapping (DSM). DSM makes use of statistical methods to quantify complex relationships between a soil property and environmental covariates, and this using this relationship to the predict soil properties across landscapes. Stephan has continued in this avenue of research, aiming to address statistical challenges in DSM, such as improving the statistical modelling of soil properties to enhance soil map accuracy and developing interpretive machine learning techniques using multivariate techniques. For his work Stephan has been the recipient of the international Climate, Food and Farming and Global Research Alliance Development Scholarships (CLIFF-GRADS), the Thuthuka PhD grant of the National Research Foundation, and he is the recipient of Stellenbosch University’s Rector’s Postdoctoral Fellowship Programme in AI, machine learning and data analysis.