Dr Nazeem Mustapha is a Chief Research Specialist within the Centre for Science, Technology and Innovation Indicators (CeSTII), the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC). He obtained a BSc, BSc (Hons), HDE PG (Sec.), MSc (Applied Mathematics) and PhD (Applied Mathematics) from the University of Cape Town.
Before joining CeSTII, he held positions as a Lecturer, UCT 2003 - 2005, Executive Director at Digital Rocket Scientists (ICT and Statistical Analysis company) 2004-2005 and Statistician / Statistical Methodologist at Statistics South Africa 2006-2011.
Dr Mustapha obtained a PhD in Applied Mathematics from the University of Cape Town in 2000. An academic career at UCT was accompanied by a growing career in mathematical modelling as an entrepreneur in Information Technology. This was followed by specialist roles at senior management level at Statistics South Africa between 2006 and 2011. At Stats SA he provided consultant services on statistical methodology to economic surveys, and built mathematical models by integrating socio-economic indicators to predict monthly GDP. He also served on large projects that reviewed and re-engineered the Stats SA business register complex, and further developed national standards for official statistics to the extent of becoming SA law. Since 2011, Dr Mustapha has been employed at the Centre for Science, Technology and Innovation (CeSTII) within the HSRC where he has led the standardisation of survey methods, drafted project reports for the flagship National R&D survey amongst other project and survey reports, and published policy briefs impacting on innovation policy.
Dr Mustapha is also a founder member of the Southern African General Relativity Society and the International Astrostatistical Committee of the International Statistical Institute, served as an invited lecturer at an international summer school in Thailand in 2004, and chaired sessions at international conferences - most recently one of the plenary sessions of the Meide conference on innovation in Cape Town 2012. He provides expertise on development and measurement of innovation indicators for the Western Cape Economic Development Partnership (EDP) and the National Advisory Council on Innovation (NACI).
