Information and communications

Focus on Meraka Institute researchers
A number of achievements and outstanding contributions by the people of the Meraka Institute have been selected to feature in this issue of CSIR eNews. Articles focus on the recipients of international awards and a study grant, and invited participation at international events.

Researcher wins prestigious WMO award Mary-Jane Kgatuke, a PhD student at the Centre for High Performance Computing (CHPC), scored a first for South Africa when she was recently named recipient of a World Meteorological Organization (WMO) Research Award for Young Scientists.

New Chief Researcher - Artificial intelligence and pattern recognition expert named chief researcher Professor Etienne Barnard is a man of many talents, with expertise in artificial intelligence and pattern recognition, which find application in his field of research, which is human language technologies (HLTs).

Open education resources award shared by Meraka Institute researcher Kim Tucker, a researcher from the Meraka Institute at the CSIR, was called upon to join fellow participants in the learning4content project to receive the MERLOT Africa Network and eLearning Africa 'Free Software for OER Content Authoring' award at the third eLearning Africa conference on ICT for Development, Education and Training.

Researcher heads out to California for doctoral studies An exceptional offer to work on a PhD by the University of Santa Barbara has seen a talented young researcher of the Meraka Institute at the CSIR leave for a five-year stint. David Johnson was accepted as one of the few "top-notch applications with excellent potential for doctoral work" among a total of over 300 highly-qualified applicants.

Strong CSIR presence at international geoscience and remote sensing symposium A delegation of researchers from the CSIR presented four presentations and two posters at the recent 2008 IEEE International Geoscience & Remote Sensing Symposium (IGARSS). This included a prestigious invited opening presentation by Terence van Zyl of the CSIR's ICT for earth observation research group.

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Communicating benefits of e-infrastructure The Meraka Institute of the CSIR is working with European, Indian and Brazilian partners on BELIEF-II, a two-year project to support e-infrastructure (also known as cyberinfrastructure) projects.

Research collaboration on wireless technology takes shape The Meraka Institute of the CSIR recently had a visit by a team of Hungarian researchers from the Institute of Informatics at the University of Szeged. The visit has given strong impetus to collaboration between Hungary and South Africa on a research project in the domain of wireless mesh networks (WMN) for rural areas.

Innovation Fund investment boosts collaborative research on real-time video broadcasting project A consortium comprising the CSIR, the University of Cape Town (UCT) and Durban-based internet service provider East Coast Access (ECA) has received a three-year R14,5 m investment by the Innovation Fund.

Digital Doorway commissioned by Syngenta at Almac Community Centre A commissioning ceremony held on 26 June 2008 at Almac Community Centre in Nigel marked the handing over of a Digital Doorway sponsored by Syngenta South Africa (Pty) Limited to the Alrapark community. The Digital Doorway aims to provide access to people who would not have the opportunity to use computer facilities.

Wireless Africa identifies three African references sites Wireless Africa, a unique pan-African initiative led by the Meraka Institute of the CSIR, has named three reference sites (in Nigeria, Ghana and Uganda) to lead the first phase of the project in setting up and studying community-owned information networks to benefit poor and rural African people.