Facilitator: Prof Kennedy Otwombe is an accomplished biostatistician and public health researcher with over 17 years of experience in clinical trials, epidemiological studies, and capacity building in HIV, TB, and infectious diseases. He holds the position of Associate Professor in the School of Public Health at the University of the Witwatersrand and serves as Lead Biostatistician at the Perinatal HIV Research Unit (PHRU), Chris Hani Baragwanath Academic Hospital, in Soweto, South Africa.
Professor Otwombe has extensive expertise in designing clinical trials, statistical analysis and interpretation, presenting data safety and monitoring board reports and contributing to clinical study reports for regulatory agencies, and sponsors. He has played a pivotal role in major international trials and policy impacting research, with a scholarly output of over 170 peer-reviewed publications reflecting the breadth and depth of his contributions to global health research. He currently serves as trial statistician or DSMB member on several ongoing trials.
He focuses on research that aims to improve health outcomes/well-being of children, adolescents, adults and key populations using conventional statistical methods and AI to improve clinical diagnosis of diseases through machine learning approaches. Professor Otwombe is deeply passionate about capacity building in higher education, believing that investing in the next generation of researchers and scientists is fundamental to achieving sustainable health impact across Africa. He has successfully supervised and mentored numerous PhD and Master's students, and remains committed to creating pathways for emerging scholars to develop the technical and leadership skills needed to lead world-class research on the continent.
Professor Otwombe is actively involved in academic leadership as a council member of the AMREF International University (Nairobi, Kenya), chairing trial scientific advisory boards and as an academic editor for high-impact journals. He is also a grant reviewer for leading funders such as Wellcome Trust (UK) and the Gates Foundation (Washington, Seattle). He has secured competitive research funding including a data science grant funded by the NIH through the DSI-Africa INFORM network.