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2024 IS CONFERENCE ON OPEN SCIENCE KEYNOTE SPEAKERS
Professor Stephen M Mutula is a full professor of Information Science. He holds degree qualifications in computer science, education and information sciences. Professor Mutula is currently the Dean and Head: School of Management, IT and Governance at the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN) (South Africa). He is a National Research Foundation, NRF (SA) rated scientist and has won several national and international scholarly excellence awards. Prof Mutula has to date published over 188 peer reviewed scholarly publications including journal articles, books and chapters in books. He has also written book reviews and forward to books. Some of Prof Mutula’ s notable book publications include: Digital Economies, SMEs and E-readiness (N. York: Business Science Reference); Web-based Information Management: A cross Disciplinary Approach (Oxford: Chandos Publishing); Information and Knowledge Management in the Digital Age: Concepts, Technologies and African Perspectives (Ibadan: Third World Information Services Ltd): Digital Solutions for contemporary democracy and e-government (Hershey PA: Information Science Reference); The Diasporean: The Southern African Perspectives Vol 1 (edited, 2024, 283p) and The Diasporean: Beyond Southern Africa, Vol2 (edited, 2024, 313p). Prof Mutula’ s publications are widely cited as reflected in his current h-index of 36, 5764 citations and i10 of 127 in Google Scholar. Prof Mutula research focuses on ethical dimension of i4.0, i4.0 integration across the curriculum, digital economy, and digital government. Prof Mutula was in 2024 been awarded the Highly Ranked Scholar status globally among the top of 0.05% by the global ScholarsGPS based on his accomplishments over the last five years. This award is informed by the impact and outstanding quality of his scholarly contributions. ScholarGPS provides rankings overall (in all Fields), in 14 broad Fields (such as Medicine, Engineering, or Humanities), in 177 Disciplines (such as Surgery, Computer Science, or History), and in over 350,000 Specialties (such as Cancer, Artificial Intelligence, or Ethics) (https://scholargps.com/scholars). In particular, Prof Mutula was ranked #2 worldwide in the specialty “Digital Economy”. Prof Mutula has also in the past received several scholarly excellence awards from emerald for his outstanding publications. Prof Mutula also won the award for the regional professional body - the Standing Committee on East, Central and Southern Africa Information Professionals (SCECSAL) in 2000 in Windhoek Namibia. This year he was again awarded by SCECSAL at the regional conference held in Mombasa Kenya in early May 2024. Prof Mutula serves or has served on various international scholarly advisory boards of such leading peer reviewed journals in his field including but not limited to: Journal of Information Technology Research (JITR), International Journal of Innovation and Digital Economy (IJIDE), The Electronic Library (TEL), Information Development (ID), International Journal of E-adoption (IJEA), Knowledge Management for Development Journal (KMJD), and Online Information Review (OIR). Prof Mutula has initiated several collaborative partnerships and signed MOUs with international Universities in Europe, North America, East Africa, West Africa and Mauritius. He has successfully supervised over 60 doctoral and Masters Theses to completion. He serves as external examiner in 19 national, regional and international universities
Jan Resenga Maluleka is an NRF rated professor in the Department of Information Science at the University of South Africa (UNISA). His research interests include, indigenous knowledge systems, knowledge management, Informetrics and bibliometrics, ICT’s, Archives and records management. He is a departmental chairperson for the Higher Degrees Committee and serves on the Management Committee at UNISA’s department of Information science. He is the former chair of the Community engagement committee (2017-2018), and the former chair of the Research and Innovation committee (2018 -2019). He is the editor in chief of Mousaion (South African Journal of Information Studies). He serves on the editorial board of the African Journal of Libraries Archives and Information Sciences (2023 to date) and the Ghana Library Journal (2021 -2025). He also serves on the advisory board for the University of Johannesburg archives. He has published and co-published 35 articles in accredited national and international journals, two (2) book chapters, and edited two (2) storybooks for children. He has mentored colleagues and students in the area of research resulting in 13 accredited outputs. He supervised three (3) PhD’s to completion and currently supervising seven (7) PhD’s. He is an external examiner for the University of Cape Town, University of the Western Cape, University of Zululand, and University of Limpopo.. He is a co-investigator in the community engagement project called “Taking archives to the people” since 2017. He is also a project leader for the Storytelling and Documentation of Cultural Heritage project since 2017.
Professor Tinashe Mugwisi is an Associate Professor in the Department of Library and Information Science at the National University of Science and Technology, Zimbabwe. He holds both an MA and PhD in LIS from the University of Zululand, South Africa. He did his postdoctoral studies at the University of South Africa. His research interests are in Information seeking and retrieval, ICT for development, information literacy, knowledge management, indigenous knowledge, and agriculture information. He has authored book chapters and several articles in peer-reviewed journals.
Professor Elisha Chiware holds a BA Degree in Economics and Political Science, a Master of Library Science from Indiana University, Bloomington in the US and a PhD in Information Science from the University of Pretoria. He is the current Director of Libraries at Cape Peninsula University of Technology. He has worked in academic libraries and taught in library and information science schools in Namibia, Botswana, South Africa and Zimbabwe. Elisha previously served as Secretary General of IATUL – the International Association of University Libraries for over 6 years. He also serves on a number of advisory boards globally in digitization and research data management. Elisha has been a leader in the development of Open Science projects mainly in Research Data Management services within his own environment at Cape Peninsula University of Technology, as well as being the Technical Lead for a Data Intensive Research Project for Astronomy and Bioinformatics within the Western Cape Region – leading the Open Science Research Working Group. He has written several papers on this discipline. He has published over 50 articles, two books and made several conference presentations. Currently Professor Chiware is leading the development of a National Statistics Database for the South African Higher Education sector. A tool that will be widely used by libraries for benchmarking and advocacy in resource allocation. Professor Chiware is also the co-lead with Professor Johann Mouton of CREST at Stellenbosch university in the COLLABORATIVE PROJECT FOR THE IMPLEMENTATION OF A RESEARCH PUBLICATIONS QUALITY FRAMEWORK FOR SOUTH AFRICAN PUBLICATIONS (PQF) – a DHET sponsored project to ensure the credibility of South African Universities research outputs in international and national journals, books and conference proceedings. Prof Chiware also teaches part-time at the University of the Western Cape in Research methods and Data Stewardship as well as supervising masters and doctoral students.
Professor Dennis Ocholla graduated with a PhD in Library and Information Science in Kiev and Saint Petersburg/Leningrad in the former USSR in 1988. He is currently a Research Fellow at UNIZULU after retirement in 2022. He joined the University of Zululand as Professor (FP) and Head of the Department of Library and Information Science (1996-2014) and appointed Senior Professor at the University in 2006. He started his academic career at Moi University in Kenya, as a lecturer in 1988 and later Senior Lecturer and Head of the Department of Library and Information Studies before moving to the University of Botswana as a Visiting Scholar (1995-96). He has served the University 0f Zululand as Dean (1998-99), Vice Dean (2007-2011), Deputy Dean of Research and Internationalization (2014-2019), in the Faculty of Arts (now Humanities and Social Sciences). His research and teaching interest-where he has published and graduated many masters and PhDs- include- information seeking, KM and IKS, ICT4D/Human computer interaction-user interfaces, LISE, data science- bibliometric /informetrics, information practices-information seeking, information ethics, scholarly communication, and research methods. He serves/has served in the editorial and peer review boards of many local (RSA) (e.g. SAJLIS) and international journals (e.g. Library Management, Informetrics, LIBRI), conferences and research organizations/councils. He was the Editor -in- Chief of Inkanyiso: Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences (2009-2022) and before that, Editor -in- Chief of South African Journal of Libraries and Information Science (2002- 2008). He has received research awards including NRF [RSA] established researcher rating(until 2028).Some of his research publications can be accessed at- https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=OJHFQG0AAAAJ&hl=en
Kelvin Joseph Bwalya is a full Professor in Computer Information Systems and University Head of Research Development at Sohar University, Oman. He is a C1 rated NRF scholar. He served as Vice Dean as well as vice chairperson of the UJ Senate Academic Freedom Committee. He is a Fellow of the International Engineering and Technology Institute (Hong Kong), and member of the Board of Directors for the Institute of Data Science and Artificial Intelligence (Singapore). Prof Bwalya is a visiting professor in three different universities: Rajamangla University of Technology, Sri Lanka; Alagappa University, India; and the Information and Communications University, Zambia. He is also a Senior Subject Expert (AI) at University of Lusaka. He has supervised 10 PhDs to completion and a significant number of Masters students. Kelvin has a PhD in Information Management (University of Johannesburg), Masters in Computer Science (Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology – KAIST) and Bachelors in Electrical Electronics Engineering (Moscow PE Technical University). He has worked as a Senior Windows Programming Researcher at Samsung Electronics (Taejŏn, South Korea) specializing in Digital Image Processing and MPEG 7/21 Digital Media Adaption. He has also worked at the University of Botswana as a senior scholar and at Zambia Research and Development Centre as Executive Director – Research and Development. Prof Bwalya has delivered numerous keynote speeches at reputable international conferences. He has a Google scholar H-Index of 22 (2570 citations) and a Scopus H index of 12 with a field weighted citation index of 1.06 (6% more than world average). Prof Bwalya has a substantial international network. His research interest lie in information and software architecture, eGaaS, Ambient Intelligence, Business Process Automation, and AI in information science.
Aderonke Olaitan Adesina is an academic, author, and resourceful educational consultant with a background in the physical and social sciences. She has garnered work experience in the health, education, and consulting sectors over the last 25 years. Her passion lies in empowering young people through academics and life skills; a passion that led her to undertake a master’s degree in Career Development at Nottingham Trent University, UK, to enable her to enhance her career planning, development, and counselling skills for teenagers, and adults in and out of schools. She earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in physics and information science, respectively, from the University of Ibadan, Nigeria, and her doctoral degree from the University of Zululand, South Africa. Aderonke is a member of the Chartered Institute of Personnel Management, Nigeria (CIPMN) and the Professional Editor’s Guild of South Africa, both at the Associate level. She is a professional career practitioner at the Career Development Institute (CDI), UK. She is currently the Postgraduate & International Students Employability Project Officer at Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham, United Kingdom. Her research and teaching interests include information management, information systems, knowledge management, and enhancing the employability of individuals. Her research publications can be accessed at https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=9T-V1aUAAAAJ&hl=en
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