Kwabena Owusu joins RISE as a postdoctoral scholar working on Activity 7 on integrated modelling. He joins us from Ghana, where he was a lecturer at the University of Energy & Natural Resources. Kwabena completed his doctoral studies in a cooperation project between the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS), Mbour, Senegal, the University Cheikh Anta Diop in Dakar, Senegal, and the Leibniz Centre for Tropical Marine Research (ZMT), Bremen, Germany.
Kwabena’s doctoral studies focused on data analysis and mathematical modelling of human harvest behaviors in common-pool resource systems with applications to fisheries. He analyzed the ecological and socio-economic conditions under which fishermen cooperate that can lead to sustainable fisheries. Specifically, he developed a new agent-based model (ABM) that provided relevant insights on the most plausible effects that combinations of different marine protected areas (MPA) design and human cooperation strategies can produce on small-scale, artisanal fisheries.
Kwabena completed a postdoctoral position at the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS-Senegal) in a project focused on assessing the functional diversity of commercially valuable fish species in Senegalese coastal waters, building capacities for functional diversity management and analyzing the effectiveness of existing governance frameworks.
Kwabena is fascinated with modeling and analysis of complex ecological and socio-economic systems using different quantitative methods, ranging from numerical to statistical models in light of empirical or experimental data with applications to sustainability and climate change.
His research activity in the RISE project includes ensuring best practices for integrating, verifying, and validating integrated project models. Kwabena cherishes a broad curiosity in science and thus loves the multi-interdisciplinary nature of RISE. He looks forward to learning from the different working groups while contributing his scientific expertise to achieving project goals.
Welcome Kwabena to the University of Waterloo and to the RISE team!