The University of Cape Town
invites you to an Inaugural Lecture
by Professor Sebastian Skatulla
Topic: What has structural mechanics to do with rheumatic heart disease and global climate change?
Structural mechanics is a discipline of civil engineering and considers the effect of forces on structures in terms of inducing motion, deformation, damage and fracture. These very general concepts of mechanics are equally applicable to “structures” in the widest sense. Indeed, structural mechanics plays a significant role in addressing some of our biggest challenges in South Africa: (1) Prevention and treatment of rheumatic heart disease; (2) Prediction of global climate change and sea level rise due to the retreat of Antarctic ice shelves.
Date: Wednesday, 13 September 2023
Time: 18:00 SAST
Venue: Snape Teaching Studio 3B, Snape Building, UCT Upper Campus
About our speaker
Sebastian Skatulla was appointed as Senior Lecturer for Structural Engineering and Mechanics in the Department of Civil Engineering at the University of Cape Town in 2009. He was promoted to Associate Professor in 2018 and to Professor in 2022.
His research activities are centred in multiscale and multiphase continuum methods. Current activities comprise the poroelasticity of Antarctic sea-ice and shelf-ice, and growth phenomena in biological tissue. He founded the first polar laboratory on the African continent in 2019. His current focus is on establishing an international South African-led research project to conduct long-term observations and structural glaciological modelling of the Fimbul Ice Shelf as affected by global climate change.