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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

Prof. Johan Henning re-appointed as dean
2007-09-18

Prof. Johan Henning, Dean of the University of the Free State's (UFS) Faculty of Law, was last week re-appointed in this position by the UFS Council for a further term of five years. Prof. Henning has been associated with the faculty since 1974 and was appointed as dean in 1998. He has been head of the faculty's Department of Roman Law History of Law and Comparative Law. This is third term as dean of the faculty. Prof. Henning is among others Honorary Fellow of the Society for Advanced Legal Studies in the United Kingdom and Honorary Member of the Order of the Coif in die United States of America. He is also member of the NEDLAC Task Team on Corporate Law Reform.

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