Francois received his PhD in December 2018 from Stellenbosch University (SU) in South Africa where he focused on improving inference algorithms for probabilistic graphical models. Before joining the SDSC, Francois worked as a senior lecturer at the Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science at SU. His research interests include probabilistic graphical models, time series forecasting, causal inference and discovery, extreme value theory, and machine learning in general.