|
Paul Nordengen of the CSIR, who has been elected President of the International Forum for Road Transport Technology
|
The CSIR's Dr Phil Paige-Green (left) with the SA Institute for Engineering and Environmental Geologists awards chairperson, John Stiff
|
Two CSIR researchers, Paul Nordengen and Dr Phil Paige-Green, were singled out recently by local and international peers.
Paul Nordengen was elected President of the International Forum for Road Transport Technology at a meeting held in Melbourne, Australia. This is the first time someone from the African continent will serve in this position; previous presidents hailed from North America, Europe and Australia. Nordengen, whose term will start in July 2010, has been Vice-President: Developing Countries of the forum for the past seven years.
At the CSIR, Nordengen's involvement spans performance-based standards for heavy vehicles, bridge management systems, heavy vehicle overload control, weighbridge systems, abnormal loads and self regulation in heavy vehicle transport. Locally, he was President of the South African Road Federation for the past two years.
Nordengen was part of an international team that developed an overload control strategy for the Ministry of Public Works and Transport in Senegal. He led the development of a similar strategy for the South African Department of Transport, a traffic management strategy for the Free State Provincial Government, and an overload control strategy for Gauteng. He was also leader of a World Bank-funded project for the Ministry of Works in Malawi to determine the effect of increasing the permissible axle loads. During the past two and a half years he has been part of an OECD Working Group responsible for the project 'Moving Freight with Better Trucks'.
Dr Phil Paige-Green, engineering geologist and a chief researcher at the CSIR, has received the prestigious ABA Brink Award for a research paper on aggregate durability. The annual ABA Brink award is made by the South African Institute for Engineering and Environmental Geologists (SAIEG) in honour of the role played by Dr Tony Brink in the development of engineering geology in South Africa.
The award is presented to a SAIEG member who is the main author of a meritorious publication relating to engineering and/or environmental geology. The originality of the publication and its contribution to the advancement of engineering geology in South Africa are taken into account.
Paige-Green is the current President of SAIEG and Vice-President (Africa) of the International Association of Engineering Geology. He has received international acclaim for his research and is regarded as a world authority on tillites (a type of rock). He also did research on materials for the construction of unsealed roads, culminating in innovative specifications that have been implemented internationally. Some of Paige-Green's current work includes the development of a cost-effective way of using renewable sources, specifically waste materials, in road-binding materials.
|
