VC Open Lecture: Professor Tshilidzi Marwala

Dear colleagues and students

I write to invite you to the 2018 Vice-Chancellor’s Open Lecture, which will be presented by Professor Tshilidzi Marwala, Vice-Chancellor and Principal of the University of Johannesburg (UJ). In his lecture, titled “The Fourth Industrial Revolution and Society”, Professor Marwala will present applications of Fourth Industrial Revolution technologies to engineering, social sciences and medical problems. The implications of these on society as well as the underlying costs will be explored.

Professor Marwala, who obtained his PhD in Artificial Intelligence from the University of Cambridge in 2000, is considered to be Africa’s leading academic in the field. After completing his Cambridge studies, he became a postdoctoral research associate at the Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine from 2000 to 2001, where he worked on intelligence software. Before this, he obtained his Master’s in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Pretoria in 1997. In 1995, he graduated magna cum laude from the Case Western Reserve University in the United States, where he had been awarded a scholarship by the Educational Opportunities Council to study Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering.

Prior to his appointment as UJ Vice-Chancellor, Professor Marwala served as the Deputy Vice-Chancellor of Research and Internationalisation (from 2013 to 2017), and the Executive Dean of the Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment (2009 to 2013) at the same university.

Professor Marwala has received more than 45 honours and awards, including the Order of Mapungubwe (Bronze), and was the first African engineer to be awarded the National Research Foundation’s President’s Award. He has published 11 books, with over 280 papers in journals and book chapters. Between 2003 and 2008, he was – among others – the Carl and Emily Fuchs Chair of Systems and Control Engineering and the SARChI Chair of Systems Engineering at the University of the Witwatersrand.

Please attend this lecture to hear from one of the finest minds on the subject of the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

When: Tuesday, 9 October 2018

Where: New Lecture Theatre, University Avenue South, Upper Campus, University of Cape Town

Time: 17:00 (Doors open at 16:00, guests to be seated by 16:45)

RSVP: Please confirm your attendance online by Friday, 5 October 2018

For further information, please email cmdevents@uct.ac.za or phone 021 650 4870/4847.

Please note: Due to limited space, seats will be allocated on a first-come, first-served basis.

Sincerely

Professor Mamokgethi Phakeng
Vice-Chancellor

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