Inger Fabris-Rotelli

Academic - statistician, University of Pretoria
Prof Inger Fabris-Rotelli is currently an associate professor in the Department of Statistics, University of Pretoria. She has been at the Department of Statistics since 2004.

She holds a PhD in mathematical sciences, obtained in 2013, an MSc in applied mathematics, a double BSc (Hons) in mathematical statistics and applied mathematics and a BSc in applied mathematics.

She has supervised 56 honours and 24 master's students to completion, and is currently supervising 6 honours, 6 master's and 7 doctoral students, and has a particular passion for postgraduate supervision. She has published 27 peer-reviewed journal articles, 21 peer-reviewed conference proceedings papers and 1 book chapter.

She was on the executive of the South African Statistical Association (SASA) from 2012 to 2018, and from 2019 has been a director on the ICCSSA (Institute of Certificated and Chartered Statisticians in South Africa) board. She is the current president of SASA and the CEO of ICCSSA. She is also a member of ISI, SIAM and IMS internationally, and the Golden Key Society, SASA, S2A3, SAMS, ICCSSA (registered as a chartered statistician from 2019), GISSA, SAMSA, GASA and RLadies Johannesburg co-chair locally. She is a SACNASP council member elected 2021 – 2025.

Her research interests are in spatial statistics and GIS, as well as remote sensing and general image processing, including spatial epidemiology and criminology.

She has a number of countrywide research collaboration groups, namely SEPIMOD (Spatial Epidemiological Modelling) and StatSNetSA (a capacity development research group for building doctoral supervision skills in academic statistics in South Africa and further in general supporting the young academics in statistics in South Africa). Both these groups have resulted in a number of publications, postgraduate student growth and young academic development.

She has a National Research Foundation Y2 rating in recognition of her research and received the University of Pretoria Exceptional Young Researcher award in 2023.

Prof Fabris-Rotelli is an Abe Bailey Fellow (2007 tour award), is a 2018 fellow of the TUKS Young Researcher Leadership Program (TYRLP), and was selected as a BRICS Young Scientist 2020 in Artificial Intelligence.