Monday schedule
Programme
Parallel oral sessions, a panel on inclusive bioinformatics, flash talks, keynotes, prize giving, and society AGMs.
Monday, 31 August 2026
African Genomes in the Global Village: Landscapes to celebrate diversity
Welcome and housekeeping
Caivil Ndobela, President of SASBi-SC
Opening Keynote: Never Stop Evolving: Lessons from a Life in Bioinformatics
Dr Rian Pierneef, President of the South African Society for Bioinformatics
Session 1: Oral Presentations
Session 1A: Human Landscapes
Population Genomics, Immunity, and health diversity — Population-level genetic diversity, host-immune responses, and molecular signatures associated with infectious disease susceptibility
- 09:45 – 10:00Phylogenetic age is associated with mitochondrial heteroplasmy in African and diaspora populations — Dayna Adrienne Croock
- 10:00 – 10:15CCR5 regulatory variants and novel loci associated with susceptibility to HIV-1 infection in Sub-Saharan African populations — Isabel du Randt
- 10:15 – 10:30Sex-Specific Gene Expression Signatures as Biomarkers in predicting Tuberculosis Relapse — Bongani Mnyandli
Session 1B: Pathogen Landscapes
Host-Pathogen Interactions, Infectious Disease, and Genomic Diversity — Molecular and genomic approaches to understanding host–pathogen interactions, pathogen diversity, and mechanisms underlying infectious disease
- 09:45 – 10:00Characterisation of the Subcellular Localisation of African Horse Sickness Virus Non-structural Protein NS5 — Nipho Mtambo
- 10:00 – 10:15Genetic Diversity of Ehrlichia ruminantium Based on Multilocus Sequence Typing of Isolates from Indigenous Goats and Amblyomma hebraeum Ticks — Xolile Nuse
- 10:15 – 10:30Transcriptomic Characterisation of Differentiation-driven Priming of the Interferon-α Response in THP-1 macrophages — Boithuso Phale
Tea Break
Panel discussion: Building an inclusive and equitable bioinformatics ecosystem
Session Chair: Joshua Sampson, President of the SAGS-Student Society. Panel: Prof. Scott Hazelhurst (WITS), Prof. Özlem Tastan-Bishop (RU), Lebogang Siviya (NMU), Mr. Siyanda Mazibuko (NMU), Prof. Carminita Frost (NMU)
Picture Moment
#BIO26inNMU #Bioinformatics #Genetics
Lunch
Session 2: Oral Presentations
Session 2A: Computation Landscapes
Machine Learning, Bioinformatic Pipelines, and Data Discovery — Advanced algorithmic approaches, neural networks, automated screening workflows, and sequence classifiers applied to oncology and genomic tracking
- 12:50 – 13:05Graph Neural Network-Based Discovery of miRNA-mRNA Regulatory Interactions in Breast Cancer — Nothando Gama
- 13:05 – 13:20Reconstructing Cervical Cancer Tumour Microenvironment States from DNA Methylation Profiles Using a Machine Learning Framework — Saltiel Hamese
- 13:20 – 13:35DockVina: An Automated Molecular Docking Pipeline for High Throughput Virtual Screening — Siphamandla Mnakekeli Dlamini
- 13:35 – 13:50Taxonomic Binning of Long-Read DNA Sequences by K-mer Composition using Decision Tree Classifiers — Bruhan Kyomuhendo
Session 2B: Ecological Landscapes
Wildlife conservation, Environmental Health, and Ecosystem Diversity — Tracking diversity across diverse biomes, spanning African wildlife conservation, river systems, aquaculture and agricultural ecology
- 12:50 – 13:05Surveillance and Monitoring of Antimicrobial-Resistant Human Pathogenic and Zoonotic Bacteria in the Ngamiland and Okavango Delta — Patience Motshosi
- 13:05 – 13:20Temporal Dynamics of the Gut Microbiome During Smoltification in Atlantic Salmon (Salmo salar) — Muktaar Badrorin
- 13:20 – 13:35Unravelling the Elusive Mating Strategy of Dematophora necatrix: A Combined Genomic and Physiological Approach — Annabel Norval
Comfort Break
Session 3: Flash talks
Session chairs: Joshua Sampson, President of SAGS SC and Sandile Ntloko, Deputy Development of SASBi-SC · Facilitators: Odireleng Mosuwe and Caivil Ndobela · Wrap-up chair: Nozipho Magagula, Deputy Secretary & Treasurer of SASBi-SC
- 14:00 – 14:07Advancing avian genomics: A de novo assembly pipeline to generate a high-quality reference genome for the Southern Bald Ibis (Geronticus calvus) — Ashley Colleen Mortimer
- 14:07 – 14:14Does multi-task supervision teach a classifier where to look? A quantitative attention-localization study in brain tumor MRI — Tisetso Letuka
- 14:14 – 14:21The Role of the Gut Microbiome in Inflammation and Multimorbidity in African Populations: Evidence from AWI-GEN — Aaron Berkman
- 14:21 – 14:28Impact of Reference Genome, Alignment Strategy, and Quantification Method on Locus-Specific Human Endogenous Retrovirus (HERV) Detection During Monocyte-to-Macrophage Differentiation — Tebogo Phago
- 14:28 – 14:35Integrated Phenotypic Profiling and Therapeutic Target Prioritization of Clinical Multidrug-Resistant Pseudomonas aeruginosa Exhibiting Biofilm-Driven Persistence — Sinethemba Yakobi
- 14:35 – 14:42Benchmarking DNBSEQ-T7 Sequencing Performance Using Genome in a Bottle Reference Genomes: Impact of Library Preparation Strategies — Maano Malima
- 14:42 – 15:00Session Wrap Up Q&A
Closing Keynote: Building the Future of African Bioinformatics: Innovation, Collaboration, and Impact
Prof Nicola Mulder — Head of CBIO, UCT; Principal investigator of H3ABioNet; ABI Founding member
Sponsor talk: Diplomics
Prize Giving
Annual General Meetings
AGM SASBi
Annual general meeting
AGM SAGS
Annual general meeting