Informally, people call me Jay and you should too. My full name is Juan Hein Klopper. Allow me to unpack that. The Juan is a glowing tribute to my parents inability to spell. They liked the sound of the French name Jean, but went for the Spanish spelling. It has been an uphill battle of explanation ever since. Thanks mom and dad! I don’t know where the Hein came from. They were always super secretive about it. Maybe the name is why I studied German. It sounds German. The Klopper is pure Dutch. I can trace those long-forgotten ancestors straight to Amsterdam. I love The Netherlands.
My first academic love is mathematics. Abstract algebra is my favorite. It should be introduced much sooner in any math curriculum. Truth be told, I was swayed by exciting televisions shows to study medicine instead of mathematics. I was that nerdy kid who always scored top honors. I couldn’t stand not getting the best marks. The encouragement of my parents and all my teachers had their desired effect. I went to medical school. By far the coolest people in med school were the surgeons. They were god-like. If there was anything I was going to specialize in, it was going to be a surgeon. So after med school, that is just what I did. I became a surgeon . As a point of interest, this all happened in South Africa. In our training we operated day and night. To this day, many surgeons go to South Africa to get more cutting experience. Those were great days, despite it never being my fist love.
After I became an attending (called a consultant in the rest of the English-speaking world), boredom struck. Don’t get me wrong. Surgery is an exiting field. The adrenalin rush is always there. But the intellectual stimulation, not so much. At least for me. So, I became the mathematics student version of recent tech giants. I went back to University and took all the math courses that I loved.
Something inside of me was a surgeon and, I suppose, will always be a surgeon. I eventually became the first Clinical Head of the Acute Care Surgery Unit at Groote Schuur Hospital, the academic hospital of the University of Cape Town (UCT) and home of the world’s first human heart transplant. Here, I wrote the seminal paper on the structure of the then new field of acute care surgery. Along the way, my worlds of mathematics and medicine collided. The governing body of healthcare in South Africa changed the rules to register as a medical specialist. Every resident now had to do research. In a resource-constrained environment that was doomed to be problematic decision. There was always going to be more residents than proper mentors and advisors. Added to this was the dire shortage of biostatisticians in medical schools in South Africa. They exist. It is just that there was never enough money to employ them. So started my journey into research and biostatistics education.
At this time, online learning was becoming a thing. I had so many meetings with the vice-chancellor (that is South African speak for the boss) of UCT at the time, pushing for the university to join one of the new massive open online course platforms taking the world by storm. Eventually, he relented and UCT was the first university from the African continent to join the eminent online platform, Coursera. With a large grant, I joined forces with the Center for Innovation in Teaching and Learning at UCT to generate interest and provide training on the production of online courses. One of the courses created was my course on biostatistics. It was the first course from an African university on Coursera. At last count, it had more than 150,000 students. Not a day goes by that I don’t get a wonderful message from someone who has taken the course. I went on to create three courses on statistics on Coursera. I fell in love with generating education content. YouTube was the easiest outlet for this love and to date I have uploaded more than 1,400 video tutorials on my channel. My educational material is also plastered all over sites such as GitHub and RPubs. I was fortunate to receive international recognition for my efforts, being awarded the Open Education Consortium (of prominent universities) Educator of the Year award.
It is in this world of online education that I first met the brilliant Lorena Barba, a Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at The George Washington University. Seriously, stop reading right now and take some time to read up on Professor Barba and her fantastic work. Keep this tab open, though, so you can continue reading about me rambling on about myself.
COVID-19 struct and our usual operating rooms closed down for emergencies only. There was strict alcohol prohibition in South Africa and because of this we saw a massive decline in interpersonal violence (gunshots and stab wounds). Like so many other healthcare workers, I became a frontline provider. Some of my own colleagues fell providing care. It was (and still is) a painful time. During all of this, I continued my educational efforts and was awarded the opportunity to join the Department of Biostatistics and Bioinformatics at the Milken Institute School of Public Health at The George Washington University.
I do not know how this universe works, but landing up in a department lead by Scott Evans has been more than winning the largest prize in the world. I am surrounded by the most wonderful, thoughtful, kind, and competent researchers and colleagues possible, and I have worked with a number of great people. If you know this department, you know what I am talking about. I cannot describe in words how great this department and its people are. I feel fortunate to be here and hope to add just a little bit to their ongoing success.
Finally, a word on our students here at the School. My word. We must have the best students in the world. I am throughly enjoying teaching here. To all my students, you are fantastic. I look forward to following each and everyone’s career.