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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

Tom Friedman guest speaker at School of Management breakfast
2009-08-23

 
Tom Friedman, author of the number one bestseller The World is Flat and world-renowned columnist of the New York Times, was recently the guest speaker during a breakfast hosted by the University of the Free State’s (UFS) School of Management and the Altron Group in Sandton, Johannesburg.

Friedman said that finding new energy “would be the greatest industrial project mankind has ever achieved. The next global industry, and one that will bring economic and social success to the country that develops it, will be the quest for a cheap, clean and sustainable source of energy.”

The function, attended mostly by business people, was a great success. According to Prof. Helena van Zyl, Director of the UFS School of Management it was an exceptional opportunity to engage with a true international scholar and one of the most influencing opinion leaders of the day. “The School was a proud host of this value-adding event,” she says.
Photo: Supplied

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