UCT scoops three NSTF/BHP Billiton Awards

UCT has winners in three categories of the 2012/13 NSTF-BHP Billiton Awards, which honour outstanding contributions to science, engineering, technology and innovation in the South African research and development community.

Winners in the 12 categories were announced at a gala dinner in Gauteng on 27 June, presented by the Minister in the Presidency, Trevor Manuel, on behalf of Minister of Science and Technology Derek Hanekom. This is the fifteenth occasion of the awards.

The UCT winners are:

• Professor Robert Millar, Senior Research Scholar in the Faculty of Health Sciences and director of the Mammal Research Unit at the University of Pretoria who clinched The Lifetime Achiever Award to an individual for an outstanding contribution to SETI over a lifetime .
• Professor Graeme Cumming, Pola Pasvolsky Chair of Conservation Biology, Percy FitzPatrick Institute in the Department of Biological Sciences, who won the T W Kambule NRF-NSTF Award To an Individual for an Outstanding Contribution to SETI through Research and its Outputs over the past five to 10 years.
• The award for An Individual or a Team for an Outstanding Contribution to SETI through Research Leading to Innovation went to the Adaptive Real-Time Internet Streaming Technology (ARTIST) Team , a collaborative effort between UCT [represented by Professor Gerhard de Jager and Associate Professor Mqhele Dlodlo] the CSIR, and East Coast Access.

Prof Robert Millar	Prof Graeme Cumming
Prof Gerhard de Jager	Assoc Prof Mqhele Dlodlo

"We congratulate our winners, each an ambassador for UCT who has done us proud for their work in capacity building, outreach and innovation,' said executive director of the Research Office, Dr Marilet Sienaert. 'While we work hard to establish a thriving research community, we are particularly mindful of how important these winners are in their capacity as mentors and role models to a new generation in science, engineering and technology.'

Seven UCT scholars from six research units were finalists in this year's awards.

The NSTF-BHP Billiton Awards is the flagship project of the largest and most prominent multi-stakeholder representative forum for science, engineering, technology and innovation organisations in South Africa.