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30 December 2019 | Story Thabo Kessah | Photo Thabo Kessah
Gavin Dollman
Gavin Dollman is involved in virtual prospecting for fossils using a drone.

Gavin Dollman is one of the young researchers selected for the international research programme funded through the US-SA Higher Education Network. This prestigious programme is aimed at giving PhD candidates and their supervisors the opportunity to regularly travel to the USA and spend time at participating US universities where their co-promoters will be based.

“The University Staff Doctoral Programme (USDP) has allowed me to bring my idea of collaborative science to fruition. It’s an exciting opportunity,” Dollman said.

Dollman added that his PhD studies would focus on the machine and deep learning for prospecting for palaeontology. He is studying with the Appalachian State University. Other participating universities are Montana and Colorado State.

He has also had the privilege to work alongside a team of Geologists and Paleontologists from the universities of Birmingham, Zurich and Oxford in a project under the auspices of the University of the Witwatersrand’s Evolution Studies Institute (ESI) on a site in rural Eastern Cape.

“My role within this massive project is to perform a detailed survey of the sites and the surrounding area for later analysis. I used a drone known as the DJI Phantom 3 Pro with which I took hundreds of pictures that were later put together to create a detailed map,” he said.

“The maps allowed for virtual prospecting by the team and will in the long term serve as the basis for a predictive fossil model for the area.”

Dollman is a lecturer in the Department of Computer Science and Informatics on the Qwaqwa Campus.

News Archive

News: Hockey and tennis
2009-05-19

Kovsie counts under SA’s top 25 hockey players
Cherie Smith, a second-year Quantity Surveying student at the University of the Free State (UFS), was appointed as a non-travelling reserve for the SA O/21 women’s hockey team that will participate in the Junior World Cup in the USA. Cherie counts under the top 25 junior hockey players in South Africa. 


Two UFS tennis teams compete nationally
The Kovsie men’s and women’s tennis teams were elected to represent the Free State at the National Club Championships in Durban from 21-26 July 2009. Elrien de Villiers, Rensia Henning and Jeanne du Plessis were included in the women’s team and Reon Henning, Willem Steenkamp and P.W. Holtzhausen will represent the men. The women are the defending champions and last year the men ended in fifth place.

Karin Coetzee is also included in the South African Student Tennis Team that will participate from 1-12 June 2009 in the World Student Games in Belgrade, Serbia. The Kovsie coach, Marnus Kleinhans, was also elected as the team’s coach.

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