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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

UFS and Sasol sign overarching agreement
2009-06-17

 
Pictured are, from the left: Prof. Roodt, Prof. M.J. Crous (Acting Vice-Rector: Academic Operations), Prof. Verschoor, Dr Godorr and Mr Nel.
Photo: Mangaliso Radebe


 

Sasol senior management Dr Sven Godorr, Manager of Research & Development, Sasol Technology, and Mr Johann Nel, Manager of Technology Contracting at Sasol, visited the UFS on 8 June 2009 to sign the overarching agreement between SASOL and the UFS regarding contract work and students being trained with SASOL support. Currently, these SASOL supported projects at the UFS are primarily supervised by Prof. Ben Bezuidenhoudt, SASOL seconded professor in Organic Chemistry, Prof. Jannie Swarts, Head of Physical Chemistry Division and Prof. André Roodt, Head of Inorganic Division and Chairperson of the Chemistry Department. The signatories from the UFS were Prof. Teuns Verschoor, Acting Rector and Vice-Chancellor and Prof. Herman van Schalkwyk, Dean of Natural and Agricultural Sciences. This agreement forms part of the SASOL-supported and UFS senior management's revitalisation of Chemistry to more than R100 million over the past four and half years.

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