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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 awards honorary doctorates during spring graduation ceremony
2004-09-20

The University of the Free State (UFS) will award three honorary doctorates this week during its spring graduation ceremony.

The graduation ceremony will take place on Wednesday 22 September 2004 and the honorary doctorates are Dr Calvin Seerveld (D Phil (hc), Prof YK Seedat (MD (hc) and Dr Mary Seely (D Sc (hc).

“The doctorates come from a wide spectrum of specialty fields and serve as proof of the UFS’s policy to give recognition to people who stand out and make a difference,” says Prof Frederick Fourie, Rector and Vice-Chancellor of the UFS.

Dr Calvin Seerveld (D Phil (hc) will receive an honorary doctorate for his academic leadership at the Institute for Christian Studies in Toronto and the wide international recognition he has received throughout his career in various subject areas, eg philosophical aesthesia, the theory of art, the methodology of the description of the history of art and continental philosophy.

Prof YK Seedat (MD (hc) will receive an honorary doctorate for his extraordinary contribution to medicine in South Africa. His research in the field of hypertension in blacks received international recognition and significantly contributed to the understanding of the pathophysiology of this condition.

In the mid-eighties Prof Seedat was instrumental in supporting the bid from the Faculty of Medicine at the University of the Orange Free State (UOFS) to host the first Colleges of Medicine of South Africa examination in Bloemfontein. This started a tradition that is still being maintained. Prof Seedat is a researcher at the Faculty of Health Sciences at the University of Kwa-Zulu Natal.

The Executive Director of the Desert Research Foundation of Namibia, Dr Mary Seely (D Sc (hc)), will be honored for the impact she has made on the development of environmental management in the drier parts of the southern African subcontinent. Though her research has been concentrated in Namibia, she has affected the professional lives of large numbers of ecologists, environmental scientists and environmental managers.

According to Prof Fourie the three doctorates form part of the greater group of 18 who will be honored by the UFS during its centenary year. The last group will be receiving their honorary doctorates in October 2004.

 

Media release
Issued by: Lacea Loader
Media Representative
Tel: (051) 401-2584
Cell: 083 645 2454
E-mail: loaderl.stg@mail.uovs.ac.za
20 September 2004

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