Celebrating EBE’s excellent research

The Faculty of Engineering & the Built Environment is focussed on improving its research profile and in May 2015, staff and students received awards for their outstanding research work.

A Departmental Research award of R10 000 was given to a staff member from each department for being the most prolific publisher in the preceding calendar year. The recipients were:

Professor Edgar Pieterse from the African Centre for Cities from the School of Architecture, Planning & Geomatics
Dr Abimbola Windapo from the Department of Construction Economics and Management,
Professor Kobus Van Zyl from the Department of Civil Engineering
A/Professor Komla Folly from the Department of Electrical Engineering
Professor Harald Winkler from the Energy Research Centre in Mechanical Engineering
Professors Eric Van Steen and Michael Claeys from the Department of Chemical Engineering split the award.

DVC Professor Visser with Dr Windapo Professor Van Zyl with DVC Professor Visser

DVC Professor Visser with A/Professor Folly Professors Claeys, Van Steen and DVC Prof Visser

The EBE Research Award of R50 000 went to Dr Abimbola Windapo for being the most prolific publisher in EBE in the preceding calendar year. The award was open to staff from the ranks of senior lecturer, lecturer, senior research officer, and research officer. The award was based on the weighted output of the publication count and selected additional outputs.

Professor Gerald Nurick received the EBE Professorial Research Award. This award goes to the researcher in the EBE Faculty showing the best-ranked research profile over a five-year research period. Professor Nurick has been working in the Department of Mechanical Engineering in the field of impact dynamics for over twenty years. During this period, he has supervised over 60 MSc, PhD and post-doctoral graduate students who are now spread around the world. He has over 130 academic publications covering the following topics; Impact and Blast Dynamics; Crash worthiness; Material Properties at High Strain Rates; Metals and Composites; Human Response and Survivability; Impact on Sports Equipment; and Comminution.

Research student awards were made to encourage postgraduate students to publish during their degrees. The award was made to students who had a research paper accepted by a peer-reviewed journal prior to graduation. The student had to be the first author on the paper or have played a centre role in carrying out the work and writing the paper. The value of the award was R 4 000 and was awarded to five students at the EBE Research Expo.

The five students were: Gabriel Lellouch and Samkeliso Shongwe from Electrical Engineering, Elaine Govender and Margreth Tadie from Chemical Engineering and Victoria Cain from Mechanical Engineering.

Professor Sue Harrison, Deputy Dean (Postgraduate and Research), seen in the pictures below, presented the awards to the students at the Faculty Research Expo.