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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.

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Olympic games 2012 in London in Sarah's aim
2009-06-12

 
Photo: Supplied

 

Sarah Shannon (pictured), a cerebral palsy swimmer doing her postgraduate diploma in education at the University of the Free State, recently received the news that she is included in the preliminary training team to prepare for the Paralympic Games in London in 2012. She took part in the Paralympic World Cup in Manchester, England, in May this year. The preliminary training group is selected by the South African Sport Confederation and Olympic Committee (SASCOC) and will be supported and developed in their preparation for the selection of the final team for London 2012. Sarah reached the final round in both her fields in the Paralympic Games in Beijing in 2008. Here she is pictured at the swimming pool in Beijing.

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