The Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) has presented two DTI Technology Awards to Rhodes University staff members. Dr Lee-Anne McKinnell, a Research Associate in the Department of Physics and Electronics who also works for the Hermanus Magnetic Observatory (HMO), and Professor Alfredo Terzoli, head of the Telkom Centre of Excellence in Distributed Multimedia, hosted by the Computer Science Department, are the recipients.
The purpose of the awards is to raise awareness of the benefits offered by technology and demonstrate how its use can help local enterprises become more competitive. The awards recognize individuals who, or organisations which, contribute towards technology promotion and innovation in South Africa. The 2009 award winners were presented with both a trophy and a framed certificate.
Dr McKinnell and Prof Terzoli were nominated by the Technology and Human Resources for Industry Programme (THRIP), which funds part of their research. THRIP supports projects which are able to be applied directly within industry, through a mechanism that matches at a specified ratio, the funding from industry that the projects were able to attract. Dr McKinnell's project won the award in the Advanced Hi Technology category and Professor Terzoli received his award in the Research Collaboration category.
Dr McKinnell's project, entitled Ionospheric Modelling: Phase 5 - Total Electron Content Modelling, deals with the development of a South African Ionospheric model that can be used for locating radio signals as they travel through the atmosphere. This particular phase of the project is concerned with the development of an ionospheric map collating all available sources of ionospheric information.
The ionosphere is an area of the Earth's upper atmosphere, lying about 90 to 350 kilometres above the surface of the planet and which has an effect on radio waves. This study thus holds implications for various industries, including communications, navigation and aviation, and defence.
Dr McKinnell explained how being firstly nominated for, and then winning, the award came as a huge surprise for her. She praised the amount of support she receives in her work from the Rhodes Research and Dean's offices, and believes that the fact that two THRIP projects at Rhodes won awards at the 2009 DTI ceremony shows that the University functions as a good environment for research development, and provides its researchers with the support they need to achieve their aims.
The Telkom Centre of Excellence works on the basis of collaboration with industry partners, other academic institutions both here and abroad, and with other departments at Rhodes University. Prof Terzoli's winning project deals with the prototyping of a Distributed Media-Services Platform. The platform's purpose is to allow fast development and deployment of new media-intensive services in an IP environment. The services are intended to be usable by a variety of end-points, including legacy ones such as traditional telephones.
Prof Terzoli said the award coming directly from THRIP, one of their more demanding funders, is cause for celebration. He echoes Dr McKinnell's comment that the fact that Rhodes University received two awards in this year's ceremony expresses a ringing endorsement of the quality of work undertaken at the University.The Telkom Centre of Excellence is sponsored by Telkom, Comverse, Tellabs, Stortech, Amatole Telecoms, Mars Technologies and Bright Ideas 39 Projects.
The DTI Technology Awards incorporate an Exhibition, this year titled 'Innovation for Change' which is attended by representatives of industries, universities and schools. Prof Terzoli and four of his students were among the exhibitors and their demo, of a complete video-on-demand system based on Mobicents, attracted the attention of the pupils on the first day of the exhibition and that of Trade and Industry Minister, Mr Rob Davies.
Story by Jeannie McKeown