Postdoctoral Research Engagement Update
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On 28 November 2025, Dr. Awol Ebrie presented the progress of his postdoctoral research to members of the Perinatal HIV Research Unit (PHRU) in Johannesburg. His current work includes developing deep-learning methods for causal inference and evaluating convolutional neural networks (CNNs) and transformer-based models for tuberculosis (TB) detection from radiological images.
Alongside his own projects, Dr. Ebrie is contributing to two collaborative NICD/PHRU research initiatives. His roles include designing statistical and machine-learning approaches and developing data-management workflows to convert NICD’s nationwide datasets into analysis-ready formats. During the session, he outlined methodologies for record deduplication, missing-value imputation, and probabilistic linkage of datasets without unique identifiers.
Engaging stakeholders - clinicians, data teams, program managers, and community partners - throughout all stages of the research process is central to his Public Engagement with Science (PES) responsibilities. Given that his TB image-analysis project relies on X-ray images from PHRU, continuous collaboration ensures that the research remains relevant to public-health priorities and that stakeholders have a meaningful role in guiding the work from inception to dissemination.