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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

Belgian academics share knowledge on sociomedical topics
2007-04-23

Prof. Herman Meulemans, professor of social research methods and medical sociology at the Department of Sociology, Universiteit Antwerpen in Belgium and Mr Edwin Wouters, sociologist at the Research Centre for Longitudinal and Life Course Studies and the Department of Sociology, at the same university, visited the University of the Free State (UFS) to deliver papers at a seminar arranged by the Centre for Health Systems Research and Development (CHSR&D). Prof. Meulemans presented a paper on: Sociological theories to analyse health and illness issues and Mr Wouters talked about: An introduction to structural equation modelling using LISREL.

At the seminar were, from the left: Prof. Dingie Janse van Rensburg (Director of the CHSR&D at the UFS), Mr Wouters, and Prof. Meulemans.
Photo: Leonie Bolleurs
 

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