In a decision that better aligns the academic programmes with its departmental name, the Department of Process Engineering within the Faculty of Engineering at Stellenbosch University (SU) has been renamed to the Department of Chemical Engineering. It was formerly known as the Department of Process Engineering. “The department’s new name is also more appropriately aligned…

Top-achieving master’s Chemical Engineering graduate Qiniso Ngiba is already making strides in his field. He has recently been named one of the two South African winners of the Blue Sky Young Researchers Innovation Award. This award celebrates young researchers and innovations in the global forest sector, and Qiniso will now compete internationally with 12 other representatives…

(Article by Martin Viljoen, Corporate Communication and Marketing, Stellenbosch University) Stellenbosch University (SU) is saddened to learn of the death (13 January 2023) of Prof Christo Viljoen, a valued member of our university community. Throughout his life, Prof Viljoen made a significant local and international impact as a leader, researcher and teacher – largely in an SU capacity.…

(Article by Engela Duvenhage for the digital research magazine of the Division for Research Development (DRD)) Dr Emmanuel Dufourq has never seen one of the last 30 remaining Hainan gibbons on Earth, but he knows very well what their calls sound like, or at least what a spectrogram image of the highs and lows of…

The Smart Municipal Areas Programme driven by the Stellenbosch University Utility Solutions Research Chair (SUN-USRC) of the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at Stellenbosch University (SU), and eight Northern Cape local municipalities have joined forces to tackle challenges stopping the municipalities from fulfilling their obligation of electricity service delivery. These two specific challenges preventing…

The annual Stellenbosch University (SU) Teaching Awards acknowledge and reward outstanding teaching at the University. The awards are offered in three categories: Leaderly Teaching Scholar, Scholarly Teacher and Teaching Collaboration. The 2022 Teaching Awards have been received by: Prof Faadiel Essop (Centre for Cardio-metabolic Research in Africa (CARMA), Division of Medical Physiology, BMRI, Faculty of…

Adam Venter, a PhD candidate in the field of Mechanical Engineering, was awarded the prestigious Rector’s Award for Social Impact which forms part of the Rector’s awards for excellent achievements. Before pursuing his PhD studies, he did his BEng and MEng at the Department of Mechanical & Mechatronic Engineering at the Faculty of Engineering of…

[Corporate Communication and Marketing – Dr Alec Basson] Facial recognition technology is used in many different areas – from airports, retail stores, healthcare, law enforcement and marketing to banks – to identify people through images and videos of their face. However, a drawback of this technology is that it does not accurately recognise the faces…

[Article by Amber Viviers] Jacques Wust, a final-year student from the Department of Electrical & Electronic Engineering, was named the overall winner of the 28th Jac van der Merwe Competition for Innovation. His project, titled A Feasibility Study of an Active Variable-geometry Port for a Bass-reflex Speaker System, explored why a better bass response from speakers…

[Article by Amber Viviers] Tianca Olivier, a master’s student from the Department of Civil Engineering at the Faculty of Engineering, is graduating cum laude at the December graduation of Stellenbosch University for her work on the repair of Dolos breakwaters with larger layered Dolos units. Her supervisor is Dr Andre Theron. The Dolos unit is a South…