News - Two Students successfully defend their Biostatistics Programme Theses

The programme is pleased to announce the accomplishment of its two students, Davis James Makupe and George Traoli Mwenye-Phiri, who on Friday 20th May 2016 successfully defended their theses before a panel of examiners and faculty of science at Chancellor College. It was all smiles to the candidates, programme, supervisors, and panelists when the Chair of Viva Voce meeting, who is also Dean of Faculty of Science, Dr. Levis Eneya, announced the good news to Davis and George at the Senior Common Room, Chancellor College that they have passed.

Davis worked on a thesis titled “An Application of Mixed Effect Models to Analyse Contraceptive Use in Malawian Women: A Bayesian Approach” while George’s thesis is titled “Mover-Stayer Model on Future Contraceptive Use among Married Women in Malawi: An Application to 2010 MDHS Data”. The candidates were called to defend their theses after each thesis was passed by three independent examiners. Having got convinced that both candidates had demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt that they owned and mastered the work, the panelists had no choice but to pass the candidates’ work. These are moments everyone celebrates, reflecting the achievement of the candidates, programme, faculty, college and the University at large.

Both candidates were supervised by Prof. Lawrence Kazembe and he registers a record of supervising 9 out of 22 candidates who successfully finished their masters in the programme, the highest so far by one supervisor alone. He is followed by Dr. Mavuto Mukaka who has successfully supervised 7 candidates.

For the first time in the programme, one panelist Dr. Sarah White participated in the viva voce through online video conferencing from United Kingdom. Dr. Sarah White is one of the faculty members who are involved in running the Malawi Biostatistics programme. She is based at College of Medicine and is currently on leave in the United Kingdom, but she had the heart to continue serving the programme by taking part in the oral defense of thesis by the candidates. We commend Dr. White for the spirit of dedication she has manifested and the Chanco ICT Department for successfully arranging networking services.

In his closing remarks, the Dean of Faculty of Science, Dr. Levis Eneya was happy with the progress being registered by Post Graduate programmes in the Faculty of Science, particulary the Biostatistics programme. He thanked the team running the programme for a job well done.

The programme commends Davis and George for working hard to finish their masters training. This is a very great achievement everyone would be proud to be part of.