Faculty of Engineering, Built Environment and Information Technology
Prof RF Sandenbergh, Dean
Telephone number: 012 420 2440
Fax number: 012 362 5173
E-mail address: roelf.sandenbergh@up.ac.za
Message by the Dean
The research activities of the Faculty of Engineering, Built Environment and Information Technology do not only provide a sound basis for its programmes, but also contribute to the knowledge and application in the fields and professions served by the faculty. The challenge is to balance local relevance with international competitiveness and to find the human and financial resources for research activities.
Increasing student numbers, especially at undergraduate level, and strong competition for human resources led to increasing demands on human resources and the loss of some established researchers. It also made the recruitment of full-time graduate students difficult, leading to a decrease in accredited publication outputs. Significant progress was, however, made with the recruitment of staff and graduate students, and with the expansion and renewal of research facilities supported by government, the University and industry, to place the faculty in an excellent position for future growth.
Departments were encouraged to develop and consolidate research activities and to promote the alignment of student research with that of supervisors, especially in the professional graduate programmes, to increase the quality and impact of research outputs. Staff are encouraged and guided to actively plan research careers and the significant increase in the number of NRF-rated researchers is an indication of the success already achieved in this regard. The quest is to improve both the participation of staff in research activities and the number and quality of research outputs.
The Department of Science and Technology (DST) research chairs in the faculty are functioning well and made significant contributions to building research in the faculty.
The Chair in Fluoromaterial Science and Process Integration, based in the Department of Chemical Engineering, with Prof Philip Crouse as chairholder, aims to lead and support the development of South Africa’s significant fluoromineral resources into bulk and speciality chemicals. An example of the positive backlinking and cooperation of the research activities of this chair was the work on the catalytic decomposition of fluorocarbon gasses using a gold surface as catalyst. Ms Ria Muller, who used the NECSA facilities at Pelindaba, received the Sastech prize for the most promising research project in chemical engineering at undergraduate level in South Africa.
The DST Chair in Artificial Intelligence, based in the Department of Computer Science, with Prof Andries Engelbrecht as chairholder, is making significant international contributions in the field of computational intelligence.
Prof Brian Rand, holder of the DST Chair in Carbon Technology and Materials, based in the Institute of Applied Materials (a joint activity with the Faculty of Natural and Agricultural Sciences), recently received an A-rating from the NRF. The research and developmental activities of this group involve the development of high-level human resources and carbon materials focused on the nuclear industry.
The National Hub for Energy Efficiency and Demand Side Management (EEDSM), sponsored by the South African National Energy Research Institute (SANERI), with Prof Xiaohua Xia as director, is functioning well and has already established significant training, onitoring and research activities. Research projects undertaken so far include industrial and residential energy optimisation, renewable energy, power systems, heat transfer, fuel efficiency, motor and transport efficiency, and energy-efficient architecture and housing.
The Polymers and Chemical Product Design Research Group in Chemical Engineering, under the leadership of Prof Walter Focke, successfully applied to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for $100 000 under the Grand Challenges Explorations Grant Scheme to support the development of an indoor spray to control malaria transmission.
Research, as an integral part of the faculty’s activities, was furthered by internal research seminars and poster sessions by staff and students, increasing the research requirements of graduate programmes, focusing on research skills and achievement as part of the requirements for the appointment and promotion of academic staff, and pursuing opportunities to increase its research funding and facilities. The activities in the faculty were also made more accessible to the wider public through the publication of the Innovate magazine.
Departmental visitations by the faculty research committee and other interested staff members, during which the departments presented their research planning and outputs, were used to increase awareness of the research activities in the faculty and to stimulate cross-fertilisation and interdepartmental cooperation. The excellent progress that some departments made with their research also served as a stimulus to others.
Conference participation by staff members was encouraged and supported by the faculty to increase the international exposure and profile of staff members. The feedback received is indeed very encouraging and contributed significantly to the research profile of the faculty. The challenge is to convert more of the conference contributions into journal publications.
Consolidation of research activities was encouraged and several departments responded by focusing their research activities so that sustainable groups were formed with the potential to significantly contribute both locally and internationally. Typical examples of these are the research groups in energy efficiency and demand side management, process control, reactor engineering, computer and data security, teletraffic for the information society, health informatics, minerals processing, pyrometallurgy, mine safety and book publishing.
International peer review of research activities was increased by the appointment of leading researchers as external examiners for theses, encouraging peer review of staff members through the NRF rating system, and encouraging publication of research in leading international journals. The faculty is indeed encouraged by the rising number of staff that received NRF ratings, and by the recognition of Prof Xiaohua Xia of the National Hub for Energy Efficiency and Demand Side Management as an A-rated researcher and Prof Thoko Majozi of the Department of Chemical Engineering as a P-rated researcher. Prof Majozi made his research on process integration available to a wider audience with the recent publication by Springer of the book Batch chemical process integration: analysis, synthesis and optimisation.
Strong links with and support of the research in the faculty by industry were again achieved with most of the research projects receiving at least some support from industry. Typical examples are the support of Eskom for a large number of research projects through its Tertiary Education Support Programme (TESP), Arcelor-Mittal for the Industrial Metals and Minerals Research Institute, Anglo American for the Chair in Pyrometallurgy in the Department of Materials Science and Metallurgical Engineering, which enables leading-edge education, research and industrial linkages on metals processing and finishing, the Sentech-supported Chair in Broad Band Multimedia Communications in the Department of Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineering, the support of the Centre for Teletraffic Engineering for the Information Society by Telkom, and Sasol for Reactor Engineering, Environmental Engineering and Tribology in the Department of Chemical Engineering. Several departments are also strongly involved with the development of pebble-bed modular reactor-related (PBMR-related) technologies. A Chair in Maintenance Engineering was initiated in the Department of Mechanical and Aeronautical Engineering with support from Anglo American, Eskom, Exxaro, and Sasol.
The further development, application and commercialisation of research are priorities for the faculty. Good progress was made with the further development of silicon-based lightemitting devices, initiated in the Carl and Emily Fuchs Institute for Micro-electronics (CEFIM), through the INSiAVA initiative, that has the potential to significantly enhance the performance of electronic devices by using light for on-chip communication, with the avalanche approach to increase the efficiency of the devices, and with securing venture funding to further support the project.
The very significant progress that the faculty made with its research initiatives during 2009 is indeed encouraging. Research is now well established as a core activity in the faculty and, although it has to be balanced with the many other demands placed on the faculty, the foundations for sustained growth into the future are being established. The support and investment of government and the University in the future growth of the faculty is encouraging and the completion of the construction of additional facilities will significantly increase its teaching and research capabilities in the near future.
Prof Roelf Sandenbergh
Dean: Engineering, Built Environment and Information Technology
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