Page 105 - University of Pretoria RESEARCH REVIEW 2016

AWARDS AND ACHIEVEMENTS
INTERNAL UP AWARDS
Each year the University honours and celebrates researchers and academic achievers for their scholarly contributions. There are five categories: the Chancellor’s Award, the Vice-Chancellor’s Book Awards, the Exceptional Postgraduate Supervisors’ Award, and awards for exceptional academic achievers, and exceptional young researchers.
The Chancellor’s Award: Teaching and Learning
Professor Tania Hanekom, Department of Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineering, was the recipient of this prestigious award for 2016, in recognition of her noteworthy achievement and contribution to the development and practice of excellence and innovation in engineering teaching and learning.
The Vice-Chancellor’s Book Awards
The Vice-Chancellor’s Book Awards recognise and reward authors
of scholarly books, monographs and collections. The prizes are awarded annually in two categories, the Humanities and Social Sciences, and Natural and Applied Sciences. For 2016, the award for the Humanities and Social Sciences was made to Professor Charles van Onselen for his book titled: Showdown at the Red Lion: the Life and Times of Jack McLoughlin.
Exceptional Postgraduate Supervisors’ Award
Professor Nigel Bennett was the recipient of the Exceptional Postgraduate Supervisors’ Award for 2016, in recognition of his excellence as a supervisor. He is a Professor of Zoology at UP and is also the incumbent of the South African Research Chairs Initiative (SARChI) Chair in Mammalian Behavioural Ecology and Physiology, and of the Austin Roberts Chair of African Mammology.
Exceptional Academic Achievers Awards
These awards recognise senior academics who are regarded highly by their peers and have consistently excelled in the areas of under- and postgraduate teaching and learning, research, community service and administration. For the year 2016, there were 10 awards: Prof Roumen Anguelov (Head of Department, Mathematics and Applied Mathematics)
Prof Ian Craig (Group Head: Control Systems in the Department of Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineering)
Prof Jaco Greeff (Department of Genetics)
Prof Josua Meyer (Head of Department, Mechanical and Aeronautical Engineering, and Chair of the School of Engineering) Prof Zander Myburg (Department of Genetics, and Chair of Forest Genomics and Biotechnology)
Prof Robert Pattinson (Director of the South African Medical Research Council’s Maternal and Infant Health Care Strategies Unit
in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology)
Prof Jolanda Roux (Forestry and Agricultural Biotechnology Institute (FABI), Department of Plant and Soil Sciences)
Prof Johan Schoeman (Head of the Department of Companion Animal Studies, Veterinary Science)
Prof Fanus Venter (Department of Microbiology and Plant
Pathology and holder of the Rand Water Chair in Water Microbiology)
Prof Alexander Zimper (Department of Economics).
Exceptional Young Researchers
This award is given to exceptional young researchers. Six awards were made for the year 2016:
Prof Stephen Coetzee (Department of Accounting in the Faculty of Economic and Management Sciences)
Prof Vinet Coetzee (Department of Genetics, and principal investigator of the Facial Morphology Research Group)
Dr Martina Crole (Department of Anatomy and Physiology, Faculty of Veterinary Science)
Dr Brett Hurley (Department of Zoology and Entomology, and a research leader of the Tree Protection Cooperative Programme (TPCP), and the DST-NRF Centre of Excellence in Tree Health Biotechnology (CTHB) at the Forestry and Agricultural Biotechnology Institute (FABI))
Dr Reza Malekian (Department of Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineering in the Faculty of Engineering, Built Environment and Information Technology)
Dr Alisa Phulukdaree (Department of Physiology in the Faculty of Health Sciences).
EXTERNAL AWARDS
Multiple awards and honours were presented to many academics across the University for excellence in their disciplines and fields, both nationally and internationally. Some of the most prestigious include:
Prof Chabani Manganyi, Research Fellow at the Centre for
the Advancement of Scholarship, received the NRF Lifetime Achievement Award for his extraordinary contributions to the development of science in and for South Africa.
Prof Brenda Wingfield, holder of the SARChI Chair in Fungal Genomics, was awarded the Harry Oppenheimer Memorial Fellowship Award for 2016.
Prof Mike Wingfield, Founding Director for the Forestry and Biotechnology Institute (FABI), received the Distinguished Leadership Award for 2016 from his alma mater, the University of Minnesota. He also received the 2017 John FW Herschel Medal of the Royal Society of South Africa in recognition of his highly distinguished multidisciplinary contributions to science.
Prof Stella Nkomo received the Continental Lifetime Achiever Award
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