Rate My Professor Sampson Akwafuo

Dr. Sampson Akwafuo serves as an Assistant Professor of Computer Science in the College of Engineering and Computer Science at California State University, Fullerton. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of North Texas and his M.S. from Glasgow Caledonian University in Scotland, UK. Before joining CSUF, he worked as a consultant for international development organizations, including the Department for International Development (DFID), United States Agency for International Development (USAID), World Bank Health programs, and the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS). Since arriving at CSUF around 2021, he has established himself as a key figure in interdisciplinary research bridging computer science and public health.

Dr. Akwafuo directs the Computational Epidemiology, Disaster and Data Intelligence (CEDDI) Lab, mentoring undergraduate students in hands-on projects involving computational modeling of infectious disease dynamics. His primary research specialization is computational epidemiology, encompassing contagion modeling, development of approximation algorithms, optimization of response logistics for disasters and disease outbreaks, and application of machine learning models to predict outbreaks in specific localities. Notable projects include simulating intervention strategies for Neglected Tropical Diseases in Sub-Saharan Africa and low- and middle-income countries, as well as modeling the spread of Lassa fever, Ebola, COVID-19, HIV, and other pathogens. He collaborates with public health faculty at CSUF and the Center for Disaster Informatics and Computational Epidemiology at Georgia State University to validate models using real-world data. Key publications include "A Dynamic Heuristic Algorithm for Management of Public Health Emergencies in Unreliable Settings" (2020), "Estimating the Transmission Risk of COVID-19 in Nigeria: A Mathematical Modelling Approach" (2020), "Modelling HIV Intervention among Most-at-Risk/Key Population: Case Study of FWSS in Nigeria" (2017), "Effects of Reduced Funeral Rites and Vaccination Impacts on the Reproduction Number R0 of Ebola Virus in West Africa" (2018), and "National HIV/AIDS Epidemiology and Impact Analysis in Nigeria" (2014). With over 90 citations across 30 publications, his work contributes to predictive analytics, outbreak surveillance, and emergency management. Dr. Akwafuo also advises the CSUF chapter of the National Society of Black Engineers, serves on technical program committees for ACM and IEEE conferences, acts as an NSF panelist, and reviews for journals in computer science and health informatics.