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MSc Statistical Science
2024 cohort graduation: Willem Cronje, Edwin Mahlangu, Kesia Phigeland and Xabsa Mohumed
Masters in Data Science
Masters in Data Science
In 2018 the Department of Statistics and Population Studies in collaboration with the Center for Business Mathematics and Informatics (BMI) launched a Masters in Data Science programme. It is one of the few successful collaborative programmes at Masters level in the field of Data Science. I have been part of this team since the programme's inception.
The team's main aim is to deliver well-rounded and industry-prepared analytics graduates by providing a world-class qualification. Our hard work and dedication to this objective has been recognised; the programme has received international accreditation from SAS (↪ view). A further testament to the quality of our programme is that in April 2022, UWC was the first university in Africa to award e-badges to their honours and masters students. These are SAS and UWC co-branded digital e-badges that allows graduates to share their achievement and qualifications online. The digital image contains verified metadata that describes the students' qualifications and the process they went through to earn the badge. Employers and peers are thus provided with concrete evidence of their SAS skills, an important addition to their profiles as they progress to becoming career analysts (↪ view).
Bursaries play a critical role in attracting the best students for our programmes as most of our students come from less privileged homes and therefore require funding to continue with postgraduate studies. For the team it has remained a top priority to get funding for this purpose. The Data Science specialisation programmes were awarded start-up funding of R3 million from Sanlam in 2018. In September 2020, we received a donation of R10.8 million from Imvelo Ventures, a venture capital investment company founded by Capitec Bank and Empowerment Capital Investment Partners to further develop and establish our Data Science programmes at Honours and Masters levels. In 2023, a further R6.6 million was secured from Imvelo Ventures for two years. We received about R1 million in bursary funding from SAS in both 2021 and 2022. In 2022, we negotiated for Master’s bursaries with the South African Reserve Bank (SARB) and in 2023, five of our Masters students were sponsored by the SARB contributing about R1 million towards student expenses (↪ view). The SARB support continued in 2024 and 2025 by allocating two bursaries per year to our students, bringing in a further R800 000.
This is a course work masters (↪ view) and an important outcome from this programme is the industry projects that the students need to complete in order to graduate. During the first semester the students complete internal projects (in groups) as part of their preparation for their external industry projects during the second semester. Given the importance of this part of the student training, our team continuously engages with various communities and industry partners to grow our network of collaborators. Our extensive community engagement initiatives were awarded, in 2023, the prestigious UWC Community Engagement Excellence Award as the Excellent Community Engagement Team (↪ view).
Since 2018, our students have been involved in approximately 15 internal UWC projects. Clients included the Faculty of Natural Sciences, Western Cape Colab, the Department of Mathematics and Applied Mathematics, the eResearch Team, SEMU, Sue Pather and the Innovation Hub (↪ view).
For the second semester projects, companies provide research topics from which students can choose and then the students are placed within these companies to work on the projects. Students complete a series of presentations throughout the course of the semester (business case, proposal, progress review and close-out) and are responsible for scheduling these presentations, preparing the meeting doc packs, etc. Once they have completed their close-out presentation, the students finalise a project report. In 2018, when the programme started, we partnered with Sanlam and TFG on these student projects (↪ view). To date, our students have solved 36 business problems for 14 different companies in 7 years. A summary of the companies is shown below.
We are very proud that by 2025, companies are now contacting us to submit their project proposals for the students. This is a significant milestone to achieve. All our graduates are currently gainfully employed (↪ view), further evidence that this programme is delivering industry-ready graduates that are in high demand.
The team has delivered many research outputs since 2018. A full list is available in this report. In 2025 we started a research project on class imbalance, a persistent characteristic of binary classification problems that has presented itself in several of the industry projects we've supervised. Our first work, namely an evaluation/comparison of various sampling techniques used to correct imbalance before predictive modelling as well as the metrics used to select the "best" model, will be presented at the 2025 Data Science, Statistics and Visualisation (DSSV) conference (↪ view).
This page showcases the students that I'm currently supervising in this programme as well as those that have completed under my supervision. I also lecture one of the modules in this programme (↪ view), and am actively involved in community engagement initiatives specifically linked to this programme (↪ view). For each student I've graduated, the company for which the project was done is given as well as where they are currently employed.
Completed Student(s)
Completed Student(s)
Mohumed, X. A. (2024). Analysing exercise-associated muscle cramping in ultramarathon runners using predictive modelling. Supervisor: Dr Retha Luus Co-supervisor: Ms Tayla Wannenberg
Industry project: South African Medical Research Council
Current employer: Vicinity Media
Mahlangu, D. (2023). Predicting medical events in SAFER studies. Supervisor: Dr Retha Luus
Industry project: South African Medical Research Council
Current employer: Sanlam
Flatela, S. L. (2023). Investigating if bank statement information can be used to improve the prediction of credit risk for new applications. Supervisor: Dr Rechelle Jacobs Co-supervisor: Dr Retha Luus
Industry project: FinChoice
Current employer: FinChoice
Ngoto, S. (2022). Assessing the effect of imbalance correction through oversampling in the prediction of injury prevalence in distance runners. Supervisor: Dr Retha Luus Co-supervisor: Mrs Leonor Bosman
Industry project: South African Medical Research Council
Current employer: Mediclinic Corporate Office
Orrie, N. (2021). Estimating income for people earning below the South African national average for the year 2019. Supervisor: Dr Retha Luus Co-supervisor: Prof Renette Blignaut
Industry project: Capitec (Internal data)
Current employer: GoCanvas
Smith, L. (2021). Targeting and modelling cosmetics customer segments. Supervisor: Dr Retha Luus Co-supervisor: Prof Renette Blignaut
Industry project: TFG
Current employer: Woolworths (previously TFG)
Pillay, D. (2019). Open medical scheme predictive terminations modelling. Supervisor: Dr Retha Luus Co-supervisors: Prof Renette Blignaut and Prof Sarel Steel
Industry project: Medscheme
Current employer: Takealot (previously Medscheme)
Wannenberg, T. (2018). Lapse propensity modelling in a life business. Supervisor: Prof Renette Blignaut Co-supervisor: Dr Retha Luus
Industry project: Sanlam
Current employer: Department of Statistics and Population Studies, UWC (previously Pick n' Pay)
Tayla Wannenberg (2018)
Simcengile Ngoto (2022)
Current Student(s)
Current Student(s)
Amobi, C. (2025). South African Medical Research Council. Supervisor: Dr Retha Luus
Maepa, T. (2025). Capitec. Supervisor: Prof Sarel Steel Co-supervisor: Dr Retha Luus
Mokoena, T. (2025). Metropolitan. Supervisor: Dr Retha Luus Co-supervisor: Ms Tayla Wannenberg
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