Latest News Archive

Please select Category, Year, and then Month to display items
Previous Archive
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

Badminton: Kovsie players rule
2005-07-07

Kovsie players again rule, as in the past three years, the SASSU badminton tournament currently being played at the University of Cape Town.

In the individual championships Chris Dednam gained a hat-trick by winning the men's singles title, the doubles title with Roelof Dednam and the mixed doubles title with Liansa Coetzee.

Roelof also won the silver medal in singles and bronze with Elaine Lues in the mixed doubles.  Even the bronze medal in men's singles was won by another Kovsie, Raymond Ronne, who also won silver in the doubles and bronze in the mixed doubles with Sonè Strauss.

Liansa and Sonè took the silver medal in the women's doubles after a long three-setter final which could have gone their way.  They both also went to the semi-finals of the singles where they were closely beaten.  Elaine Lues and Liezl van Rensburg made it to the quarter-finals of the doubles.

In the annual team competition Kovsies are well on their way to a third consecutive trophy.
 

We use cookies to make interactions with our websites and services easy and meaningful. To better understand how they are used, read more about the UFS cookie policy. By continuing to use this site you are giving us your consent to do this.

Accept