THE ENERGY RESEARCH Centre's Dr Phillip Lloyd and Eugene Visagie have won the Best Paper Award at the 2007 International Conference on the Domestic Use of Energy. The paper details their efforts to test gel fuels and compare these to alternative cooking fuels.

AT ITS AGM ON 9 MAY, the UCT Employees Union elected a new committee, made up of George du Plessis, Gary Gabriels, Linda Haynes, Hein Kleinbooi, Frans Mamabolo, Andrea Plos, Chris Tobler, Eugene Williams and Catherine Wynsculley.

ON 14 MAY, UCT hosted a colloquium by Professor Peter Hall, project engineer on the international Square Kilometre Array (SKA) telescope, which, when completed in 2020, will be the biggest radio telescope in the world. As part of the day's events, Professor Richard Schilizzi , international SKA director, gave an update on the project in a lecture at the South African Astronomical Observatory in Observatory.

DEPUTY MINISTER of Health, Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge, spoke as a guest of UCT's branch of the TAC, where she highlighted the need for more medical practitioners in the fight against HIV/AIDS. Madlala-Routledge outlined the role that health practitioners will need to play in the government's new five-year national strategic plan to combat HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted infections.

PROFESSOR DENIS COWEN, former dean of the Faculty of Law, died on 16 April, aged 89. Cowen was the dean of law at UCT from 1946-1961. During his career as a scholar, he focused on constitutional law, property law, banking law and, in his later years, environmental law.