Andriëtte Bekker is a full professor in Statistics, at the University of Pretoria, South Africa. Her expertise lies in Distribution theory learning, Unsupervised learning, Network learning and Software learning. She is the academic research leader of the Statistical Theory and Applied Statistics focus area within the Department of Science as well as in the Technology/National Research Foundation (DST-NRF) Centre of Excellence in Mathematical and Statistical Sciences. She has published more than 100 peer-reviewed papers in fundamental statistical research. She contributes significantly to the human capacity development of Southern Africa through the multitude of students for whom she acts as supervisor and mentor. Johannes T. Ferreira is an associate professor in the Department of Statistics, at the University of Pretoria, South Africa, and is Junior Focus Area Coordinator for the Statistical Theory and Applied Statistics focus area of the Centre of Excellence in Mathematical and Statistical Science, based at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. He regularly publishes in accredited peer-reviewed journals and reviews manuscripts for international journals. He is an ASLP 4.1/4.2 fellow of Future Africa and has been identified as one of the Top 200 South Africans under the age of 35 by the Mail & Guardian newspaper in the Education category in 2016.  Mohammad Arashi is an Associate Professor and Director of the Data Science Laboratory at the Ferdowsi University of Mashhad in Iran, and an Extraordinary Professor at the University of Pretoria in South Africa. He is the author of 3 books with Wiley and an elected member of ISI. He has published more than 150 papers and his major includes shrinkage estimation, variable selection, high-dimensional statistics, graphical models, and longitudinal data analysis. Ding-Geng Chen is an elected fellow of the American Statistical Association and an elected member of the International Statistical Institute. He is currently the executive director and professor in biostatistics at the College of Health Solutions, Arizona State University, USA. Professor Chen is also the DST-NRF-SAMRC research chair in Biostatistics and an Extraordinary Professor at the Department of Statistics, University of Pretoria, South Africa. He is also a senior consultant for biopharmaceuticals and government agencies with extensive expertise in clinical trial biostatistics and public health statistics. Professor Chen has written more than 200 refereed publications and co-authored/co-edited 33 books on clinical trial methodology, meta-analysis, causal-inference and public health statistics.