Scott Hazelhurst

BScHons MSc (Wits) PhD (British Columbia)
Professor of Bioinformatics in the School of Electrical and Information Engineering;
Senior Scientist, Sydney Brenner Institute for Molecular Bioscience

E-mail: Scott.Hazelhurst@wits.ac.za

School of Electrical and Information Engineering
University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg
Private Bag 3, 2050 Wits, South Africa
Tel: +27 11 717-6181

Consulting period

My consulting periods are Monday and Tuesday 10:30-12:00. You will need to book a slot at least 24 hours in advance -- please book here.

Current Teaching

  • Term 1 2023:
    • COMS 4040: High-peformance Computing and Scientific Data Management

Research

Much of my research is collaborative. My areas of interest are:

Possible research topics

I am not able to take on any new supervisions until January 2024.

Please click here for topics that I am interested in supervising. My funding for students is limited. I am open to supervising on other topics in my general research area; however, I do not have funding for these topics. I will only consider part-time students who have strong support from their employer or who can show that they will have time to pursue their studies, but only from January 2024 onwards.

Publications

References of scientific papers can be found here.

My group and students

Those in the group not too shy to be photographed

Shaun Aron,
H3ABioNet Bioinformatics
Consultant
Phelelani Mpangase
Bioinformaticist
Dr Ovokeraye Oduaran
Postdoctoral Fellow
Dr Houcemeddine Othman
Postdoctoral Fellow

David Twesigomwe
PhD student
Jorge da Rocha
PhD student
Laura Cottino
PhD student
Wits ADME collaboration

Past members

  • Past PhD students: Nechama Brodie (Using mixed-method approaches to provide new insight into media coverage of femicide); Phelelani Mpangase (Bioinformatic analyses of transcriptome and genetic variation in black South Africans with systemic sclerosis); Andrew Ndhlovu (Comparative metagenomics of a harmful algal bloom); Laura Cottino (A systematic assessment of the Copy Number Variation (CNV) landscape in ADME genes in Sub-Saharan African populations), cosupervised with Dr Venesa Sahibdeen; David Twesigomwe (Characterisation of CYP2D6 pharmacogenomic variation in African populations: an integrative bioinformatics approach), cosupervised with Professor Zane Lombard. Emma Wiener cosupervised with Professor Zane Lombard. Liron Pantanowitz, Digital Pathology and Artificial Intelligence: Feasibility for Clinical Practice), cosupervised with Professor Pamela Michelow. Jorge da Rocha Characterisation of key ADME gene variants in African populations through functional annotation and structural bioinformatics approache, cosupervised with Michele Ramsay and and Houcemeddine Othman.

  • Past MSc Students: Craig Faasen (Implementing tuple space on transputer meshes); Vashti Galpin (Equivalence semantics for concurrency : comparison and application); Philip Green (Partially ordered logical clocks for monitoring concurrent programs); Shane Morton (Software verification with symbolic trajectory evaluation); Gloria Aikhorin (Using FPGAs for the comparison of protein sequences); Ndellie Mwanangulu-Massey (An extensible architecture for a Java electronic purse system); Raymond Sinnappan (A reconfigurable approach to TCP/IP packet filtering); Adi Attar (Performance characteristics of BDD-based packet filters); Robin Phillips (Digital signatures -- a legal alternative to handwritten signatures); Pravesh Ranchod (Parallelisation of EST clustering); Seare Araya (Support vector machine prediction of HIV-1 drug resistance using the viral nucleotide patterns); Benjamin Kumwenda (A tree-structured index algorithm for expressed sequence tags clustering); Dane Kennedy (Using Manhattan distance and standard deviation for expressed sequence tag clustering); Charl van Deventer (Expressed sequence tag clustering using commercial gaming hardware); Simeon Miteff (An SDN-based firewall shunt for data-intensive science applications); Edward Steere (Massive parallelism for combinatorial problems by hardware acceleration with an application to the label switching problem); Delia Kench (Evaluating the development and effectiveness of grit and growth mindset among high school students in a computer programming project ), Joshua Selvan (GPU-based algorithms for PDB structure searching), Blessing Sitabule (Structural Bioinformatics Analysis of CYP2D6 Pharmacogenetic Variation Relevant to Sub-Saharan African Populations) cosupervised with Dr Houcemeddine Othman, Yaniv Swiel, (FPGA acceleration of GWAS permutation testing), cosupervised with Dr Mitchell Cox. Irma Maré, (Support strategies for the adoption of electronic data capture systems for biomedical research and clinical service deliver records in a heterogeneous, research intensive organization in resource constrained environments), cosupervised with Dr Mike Klipin. Samantha Schnell, (Exploring the Interaction of Host Genetics and the Gut Microbiome in Obesity), cosupervised with Dr Ovokeraye Oduaran. Ross Booyse, (Characterisation of variation in the CYP2C gene cluster in African populations), cosupervised with David Twesigomwe.

  • Past honours students and fourth-year projects: students: Gavin Sinai, Keitu Motlhaga, Michael Berry, Jin Wang, Nitesh Vallabh, Rogers Sithole, Kirsten Leong, Marko Divac, Anton Fatti, Andrew Henwood, Saul Tombuk, Christian Gotschi, George Christelis, Josh Adler, Mpiti Matsoso, Charmaine Venter, John Deneys, Asher Lipson, Moshe Waisberg, Sefako Tholo, Sibongile Eland, Burcak Birinci, Greg Kempe, Sascha Mohr, Sam Hutchinson, Opeyemi Ono, Yatin Narsai, Anastasia Soseilos, Craig Sizer, Tal Even-Tov, Jarryd Chengalroyen, Stuart Venter, Victor Neiman, Louis du Plessis, Yestin Johnson, Yair Mark, Melissa Wu, Sonali Parboo, Kershia Perumal, Mokgadi Rasekgala, Lazarus Baloyi, Mcebisi Mdlozini, Jan-Willem Steeb, Catherine Pavard, Sasha Naidoo, Rob Clucas, Tapiwa Chimana, Noel Moyo, James Allingham, Paul Cresswell, Tyron Amoretti, Matthew Bezuidenhout, Joseph Gage, Julian Zeegers, Gary Bezuidenhout, Evan Rubin, Kashann Wright, David Golach, Ross Pearse, Tshembani Mbuyi, Robin Joncker, Tristan Lilford, Gia Croock, Rael Ware.

    Some interesting links

    Other...