Dr Heti Afimeimounga

Heti Afimeimounga’s academic journey has been quite the motivating and influential one that many others can aspire to. She completed her secondary education in the Kingdom of Tonga and then moved to the city of sails; in Auckland, New Zealand to begin her tertiary education. She then completed a Bachelor of Science (BSc), Master of Science (MSc), and a PhD at the University of Auckland in 2012; specializing in Operational Research for optimising and rerouting public/private transport. She is now a professional teaching fellow at the University of Auckland, lecturing statistics courses.

Heti’s decision to progress into tertiary education was a testament to her passion for learning and not letting the opportunity pass her by. She expressed that each time she would graduate at a higher academic level, it was a chance to continue on with something she loves and to develop it even more in the future.

Her main reason for branching out into a statistics-focused career, came about when she first applied for a summer school scholarship in mathematics. She was recommended to join a project mainly involving statistics, which resulted in finding a passion she didn’t know existed. In her second year, Heti was involved in summer scholarships, where she chose a mathematics-based project to compare to her previous experience with statistics. After working on projects from both majors, she decided that although she loved the discipline of mathematics, she was fascinated by the statistics project and therefore; began her work towards completing a PhD in Statistics.

After considerable amounts of time, perseverance, and intricate research, Heti eventually developed models optimizing the policies between people having the choice of public and private transport. The ongoing research includes a dependent policy (information on the route), and an independent policy (options of different routes) to optimize the decisions individuals have. Due to the complications of the model, an overarching answer could not be solved theoretically (i.e. there is no one answer for every individual), and the game theory is still being adopted to produce an upgraded model with emerging research.

Heti’s profound advice for new and existing students would be to take a break from study or work when they need it.

She also adds, “Take some time for yourself and consider all options. Studying should not be your whole life and you need time for yourself, family, and friends. Some decisions may turn out not to be the best, but they have brought you to where you are now and the only thing you can do is make the best of it.”

View Heti's University profile here.