Dr Gaston K. Mazandu graduated with an Honours Degree in Mathematics from the University of Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and was awarded a Postgraduate Diploma in Mathematical Sciences at the AIMS South Africa in June 2005. He received a Master’s in Computer Science from Stellenbosch University in South Africa.

Through his PhD and Postdoctoral research at the University of Cape Town, he has learnt a great deal about molecular biology and life sciences, particularly with respect to microbial pathogens at the Computational Biology Division of the Institute of Infectious Disease and Molecular Medicine (IIDMM) in the department of Integrative Biomedical Sciences, Faculty of Health Sciences. This has provided him with the ability to contribute to the overall expansion of the skills base in biotechnology and he has gained valuable experience and ideal skills in several aspects of bioinformatics applied to health sciences. His current research focuses on integrating functional genomics and statistical data to analyze factors that contribute to infectious disease transmission dynamics in human populations at epidemiological and molecular levels.

In addition to his research outputs, he was a lecturer at the University of Kinshasa in DRC, and visiting lecturer at the AIMS South Africa and the University of Cape Town for the past few years, supervising undergraduate and postgraduate students. He also held the  IDRC  Junior Research Chair in Bioinformatics and Epidemiology (Mathematical Sciences) based in the AIMS South Africa Research Centre from 2014-2017 where he ran a research program between the AIMS Research Centres in South Africa and Ghana, contributing to research capacity building of African young scientists in mathematical modelling, data analysis, Bioinformatics and related applications.

Currently he is a senior researcher, focusing mainly on translational bioinformatics and epidemiology where he is building the H3ABioNet-AIMS node, contributing to building skills base in biomedical and mathematical sciences across the African continent, supported by the National Institute of Health (NIH). H3AbioNet is a pan-African Bioinformatics network for the Human Heredity and Health in Africa (H3A) project and I am the H3ABioNet-AIMS node principal investigator, contributing to building skills base in biomedical and mathematical sciences. In addition, he is highly involved in the development of the Sickle Cell integrated system at the Sickle Africa Data Coordinating Center (SADaCC), University of Cape Town.