Coursework in MSc degree (2006-7) 

See the CBIO member page about my masters research.  The research was funded by the National Research Foundation Scarce Skills Masters Scholarship, the Stanford-South Africa Bio-Medical Informatics masters training programme, and in 2006 also the Myer Levinson postgraduate entrance scholarship.
  • SSABMI short courses (October 2005).   Arranged by the Stanford-South Africa Bio-Medical Informatics(SSABMI) programme and held at UWC.  These four-day courses included HIV bioinformatics, biomedical statistics, and developing ontologies.
  • Representations and Algorithms for Computational Molecular Biology (April to June 2006 ) It was taught by Prof. Russ Altman of Stanford University, and I viewed the lectures over video streaming provided by the Stanford Center for Professional Development. Projects included Smith-Waterman sequence alignment, basic machine learning, molecular dynamics simulations for proteins, and a Bayes classifier for detecting calcium binding sites by learning from the structural features of known calcium binding sites.
  • Molecular Evolution by Ken Wolfe (September 2006). A short course at the National Bioinformatics Network, focusing on gene duplication. Also in September 2006, I helped with tutoring (because of my computer science background) in the SSABMI short course on Database Design and Database Mining taught by Amar Das.
  • Intermediate Statistics for Biomedical Research (December 2007).  An  SSABMI short-course taught at the University of the Western Cape by Prof. Michael Walker of Stanford Univeristy.

Coursework in BSc honours degree (2005)

Obtained 90% in aggregate.  I was the only one registered for "Applied Mathematics Honours", but I attended many courses from other departments.  Some physics and pure mathematics students also attended the Applied Mathematics courses.   

Funding for the year was provided by the Harry Crossley Foundation Honours Research Fellowship, the UCT Council Senior Entrance Merit Scholarship, and the Hyman Liberman Scholarship.  The latter is awarded to the person with the highest overall BSc marks in the previous year.

Mathematics and Physics Courses 

  •  Advanced Mathematical Physics A (4th-year Applied Mathematics) -  solitons, perturbation expansions, topological solitons,  Chern-Simonsz vortices and magnetic monopoles.
  • Advanced Mathematical Physics B (4th-year Applied Mathematics) - the inverse scattering transform for the nonlinear Schrodinger equation, the Riemann problem, application of solitons to chiral fields.
  • Continuum Mechanics (5th-year Mechanical Engineering) - Tensor algebra,  kinematics of continuous media, deformations and strain tensors, linear elasticity, ideal fluids, newtonian fluids and viscous fluids.
  • Quantum Mechanics (4th-year Physics) - Hilbert spaces, creation/annihilation operations, spin, time-dependent perturbation, radiative decays, gauge invariance, supersymmetry, relativistic corrections.

Statistics 4th-year Courses

  • Operations Research A
  • Operations Research B
  • Decision Modelling

Electrical and Electronic Engineering Courses

  • Digital Signal Processing (4th-year)
  • Operational Amplifiers (3rd-year)
  • Electronic Circuits (3rd-year) - including resistors/capacitors/inductors and transistor circuits (followers, amplifiers, feedback circuits in all manner of configurations)

Coursework in BSc third year (2004)

Average of three lectures per day for the year.   Awarded the class medal in Applied Mathematics and both first and second semester Physics. Placed on the Dean's Merit List.

Funding for the degree was provided by the UCT Entrance Scholarship and the Leah Mary Speiers Scholarship.

Physics 3rd-year modules (91%, 94% in two semesters)

  • Electromagnetism 
  • Thermal Physics
  • Computational Physics
  • Atomic Physics
  • Nuclear and Particle Physics
  • Solid State Physics

Applied Mathematics 3rd-year modules (96% for year)

  • Mathematical Physics  
  • General Relativity 
  • Non-linear dynamics
  • Advanced Numerical Methods

Computer Science 3rd-year courses (88%, 87%, 92% in each)

  • Operating Systems and Networks
  • Information Management and Theory of Algorithms
  • Compilers, Distributed Computing and Web-Based computing

Coursework in BSc second year (2003)

Average of 4 lectures per day for the year.  Awarded the class medal in Applied Mathematics, Electromagnetism, and second-semester Computer Science. Placed on the Dean's Merit List.

Applied Mathematics 2nd-year modules (99% for year)

  • Vector Analysis
  • Ordinary Differential Equations
  • Boundary Value Problems
  • Mathematical Modelling

Pure Mathematics 2nd-year modules (89% for year)

  • Sets and Logic
  • Linear Algebra
  • Real Analysis
  • Applied Algebra (number theory and group theory)

Computer Science 2nd-year courses (88%, 88% in two semesters)

  • Computer Science IIA - Data Structures and C++, Software Engineering and Ethics
  • Computer Science IIB - Architecture, Human-Computer Interaction, 3rd-year project

Physics 2nd-year modules (98%, 94% in two semesters)

  • Electromagnetism
  • Properties of matter
  • Classical Mechanics
  • Quantum Mechanics

Coursework in BSc first year (2002)

Average of five lectures per day for the year. Awarded the class medal in Applied Mathematics IB. Placed on the Dean's Merit List.
  • Applied Mathematics IA - Matlab, numerical methods and dynamical systems (96%)
  • Applied Mathematics IB - Dynamics and orbital dynamics (98%)
  • Pure Mathematics I - Differential and integral calculus, matrices, vector algebra, complex numbers and taylor series (90%)
  • Computer Science IA - Intro Java, databases, algorithms and boolean algebra (94%)
  • Computer Science IB - More intro algorithms in Java and MIPS assembler (89%)
  • Physics IA - Mechanics, and Electricity and Magnetism (88%)
  • Physics IB - Waves, properties of matter, thermal physics, modern physics (94%)
  • Thinking About Business - Reasoning and argumentation, ethics and business ethics (70% - but 85% for  the coursework component)
  • Statistics I - Descriptive measures, probability, distributions, hypothesis testing, correlation and regression (87%)