Zea Leon
Research Project(s)
- UPLIFT (Understanding Predictors of Lifelong Initiation and Follow-up Treatment for adolescents and youth living with HIV)
- Mzantsi Wakho Adolescent Adherence Study;
Research Interests
- Bioinformatics
- Data Management
- Infectious Diseases
Biography
Zea Leon holds a BSc Human Life Sciences (Biology) from Stellenbosch University and a BSc (Med) (Hons) Bioinformatics from the University of Cape Town. She is currently an MSc(Med) Bioinformatics candidate at the UCT Department of Biomedical Sciences. Her forthcoming thesis investigates how machine learning can predict the response of cancer cells to small molecule inhibitors. Her research interests include infectious diseases, computational biology, and data management. Her previous work has looked at the development of simulation tests to determine the impact of recombination on the accuracy of multiple sequence alignment. She began working at the Centre for Social Science Research as a quantitative research assistant in 2022, engaging in quantitative analysis in R and STATA to perform data management tasks such as quality control checks, data cleaning and analysis. She primarily works on data from the Mzansi Wakho and UPLIFT projects that make up part of a collaboration between UCT and Oxford University focussing on HIV in adolescents.