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06 April 2021 | Story Dr Nitha Ramnath | Photo Supplied
Dr Johan Coetzee, Senior Lecturer and researcher in the Department of Economics and Finance and the UFS Business School

Dr Johan Coetzee from the Faculty of Economic and Management Sciences at the University of the Free State (UFS) is championing a collaboration with the Salzburg University of Applied Sciences (SUAS) in Austria, resulting in the receipt of a considerable grant from the European Union. 

In 2020, the decision was made to apply for Erasmus+ funding from the European Commission; after a successful grant, a formal inter-institutional agreement was signed in March 2021. The agreement is the culmination of a relationship between the Department of Economics and Finance at the UFS and the Department of Controlling and Finance at SUAS since 2008. More specifically, the relationship is built on the collaboration between the UFS’s Dr Coetzee and Prof Christine Mitter from the SUAS, who was recently appointed as a Research Fellow in Finance in the department. 

“I am extremely proud of the formalisation of the relationship between the two universities. In late 2019, a delegation led by the Dean of Economic and Management Sciences, Prof Hendri Kroukamp, together with Prof Philippe Burger and myself visited Salzburg to formalise and iron out the expectations regarding future collaboration,” says Dr Coetzee. 

“The Erasmus+ grant pays testament to not only on-boarding expertise from a foreign university with a strong niche in being practically relevant to the Austrian society, but also to affirming the relationship with like-minded scholars to provide students with a culturally rewarding university experience. This agreement brings together two departments with a history of working well together, and now it is a formal manifestation of years of mutually beneficial teaching and research efforts,” says Dr Coetzee.

“On the back of this agreement,” concludes Dr Coetzee, “our departments are also currently finalising a proposal to offer a consecutive degree exchange programme where prospective postgraduate students will obtain two master’s degrees in the broader field of finance and spend time on both campuses. We look forward to this becoming a reality in the not-too-distant future.”

In addition to their teaching and research collaboration, several additional academics from the Department of Economics and Finance are also involved in the teaching collaboration. Research projects have also been concluded in the past, with future projects in the pipeline.

News Archive

New publication on groundwater remediation soon to be introduced
2017-05-05

Description: Prof Abdon Atangana groundwater remediation Tags: Prof Abdon Atangana groundwater remediation

A new book from Prof Abdon Atangana from
the UFS Institute for Groundwater Studies
proposes new techniques for groundwater
remediation, including guidelines on how chemical
companies can be positioned in any city to avoid
groundwater pollution.
Photo: Pixabay

A new publication, Fractional Operators with Constant and Variable Order with Application to Geo-Hydrology, will be published later this year, on 1 November 2017. The author, Prof Abdon Atangana, from the Institute of Groundwater Studies at the University of the Free State, said the book proposes new techniques for groundwater remediation, including guidelines on how chemical companies can be positioned in any city to avoid groundwater pollution.

Focus of the book
Prof Atangana said researchers and practitioners interested in groundwater modelling and remediation from applied mathematical and geo-hydrology backgrounds, will benefit from reading this book.

According to Elsevier, the book provides a physical review of fractional operators, fractional variable order operators, and uncertain derivatives to groundwater flow and environmental remediation. It presents a formal set of mathematical equations for the description of groundwater flow and pollution problems using the concept of non-integer order derivative. Both advantages and disadvantages of models with fractional operators are discussed.

“Researchers and practitioners
interested in groundwater modelling
and remediation from applied
mathematician and geo-hydrology
backgrounds, will benefit from
reading this book.”

About the author
Prof Atangana specialises in applied mathematics, groundwater modelling, fractional calculus and their applications, methods for partial differential equations, methods for ordinary differential equations, iterations methods, asymptotic methods, perturbations methods, and numerical method for fractional differential equations, uncertainties analysis. He has participated in 18 international conferences, organised six special sections and symposiums in international conference in Europe, Africa, Asia and USA, and has been invited as plenary speaker in eight international conferences. He also serves as editor on 20 international journal of mathematics and applied mathematics and editor-in-chief of two international journals of applied mathematics.

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