Latest News Archive

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

UFS hosts 64th Annual Congress of South African Mathematical Society

30 November 2021 | Story Leonie Bolleurs | Photo Supplied

Prof Johan Meyer, Senior Professor in the Department of Mathematics and Applied Mathematics, says he is looking forward to learning from others in the field during this collaboration.

What do trees, black holes, earthquakes, and time structures have in common?

The answer to this question is that these, in one way or the other, form the focus of some of the abstracts delivered during the Annual Congress of the South African Mathematical Society. The society has as its main objective the advancement of mathematics in South Africa.

The Department of Mathematics and Applied Mathematics at the University of the Free State (UFS), in conjunction with the South African Mathematical Society (SAMS 2021), is hosting the 64th Annual Congress of the society this week (29 November to 1 December 2021).

Prof Johan Meyer, Senior Professor in the department, says the congress, which is being conducted online, is focusing on all aspects of mathematics research, including history and teaching.

Learning from others in the field

The congress, which aims to share the latest research results in mathematics, will be attended by staff and students from universities across South Africa as well as abroad. “Anyone from the public is, of course, welcome to attend or even share their results if they are also involved in mathematics research,” adds Prof Meyer.

He says that he is looking forward to learning from others in the field during this collaboration.

The congress will include discussions on more than 120 abstracts, covering category theory, algebra, topology, logic; functional analysis and operator theory; finite groups and combinatorial structures; graph theory and combinatorics; lie symmetries and nonlinear differential equations; and applied and numerical mathematics.

Array of interesting topics presented

“It is important in many areas of science and engineering to predict and to simulate rare, random events, the occurrence of which may have negative or even catastrophic consequences. Examples include internet server overflows, mechanical breakdowns, floods, and financial crashes. Rare events can also have a positive effect, triggering for example chemical reactions or driving genetic evolution via random mutations.” Prof Hugo Touchette from Stellenbosch University will be shedding some light on this interesting topic in his presentation on Predicting and simulating rare events.

Prof Jeandrew Brink, Associate Professor in the Department of Mathematics and Applied Mathematics at the UFS, is presenting a plenary session on the topic Determining the geometry of strong field space-times in spite of tacitly assuming the answer during every measurement. In South Africa, state-of-the art pulsar timing data from the MeerKAT telescope will make a considerable contribution to conducting GR orbital tests. Prof Brink comments on how pulsar timing tests differ from tests using gravitational wave detectors, as well as what we can learn from the framework already employed to perform pulsar timing measurements.

News Archive

UFS receives research grant focusing on enablement of non-profit organisations

2011-01-20

Prof. Mabel Erasmus

The University of the Free State (UFS) has received a research grant to the value of R1,1 million from the National Research Foundation (NRF) to conduct research on community engagement, with the emphasis on knowledge as enablement – a Non-Profit Organisation (NPO) focus.

This was the first time the NRF had requested applications for research with a focus on community engagement (CE). With the grant, the UFS has become one of the first recipients of a research grant that focuses on community engagement.

The overarching research question that will be dealt with is how Higher Education Institutions (HEI) and the NPO sector can establish long-term, research-based collaborative engagements that will be mutually empowering and enabling through joint, reciprocal knowledge-based activities and capacity building.

The contention that this proposal is based on, is that HEIs have limited knowledge of the NPO sector and thus are unable to be fully responsive to the challenges that NPOs face. What is more, it is very likely that staff and students from HEIs do not have an adequate grasp of the experiential understanding, contextual community knowledge and practical know-how that NPO practitioners have, and hence do not appreciate the crucial contributions that they can make with regard to meaning-making processes aimed at improving some of the harsh South African realities.

According to Prof. Mabel Erasmus, Associate Professor and Head of the university’s Division: Service Learning, which submitted the research proposal to the NRF and is the grant-holder, the university would like the information generated by the research to be beneficial to both HEIs and the NPOs. “Knowledge regarding NPOs, specifically their challenges and information about what they are doing, will be invaluable to HEIs. At the same time, the research must benefit the NPOs with knowledge to improve their practice and strengthen their functioning.

“The research will take place in close collaboration with the NPOs, as their inputs are crucial. The research will thus not be ‘about’ them but ‘with’ them.”

“We do not want to send our students for community-based education or as volunteers to NPOs year after year and it does not mean as much to them as these organisations would hope for. With the research process we would like to strengthen NPOs, to build their capacity and give them our whole-hearted cooperation,” she said.

Funding received from the grant will be applied over a period of three years. Except for the study grants for five Ph.D. students and four master’s students, the grant will further make provision for a number of workshops, a local conference, a publication and presentations at international conferences on this matter. The research team of 22 persons includes academics from other HEIs such as the Central University of Technology, University of Zululand, University of Johannesburg and Monash SA. Several staff members of NPOs also form part of the team, including REACH (Bfn), Childline (FS) and others.

Prof. Erasmus said that the UFS was one of a few institutions that were currently conducting research to this extent on the link between the NPO sector and HEIs within the field of community engagement.

Media Release
18 January 2011
Issued by: Lacea Loader
Director: Strategic Communication (actg)
Tel: 051 401 2584
Cell: 083 645 2454
E-mail: news@ufs.ac.za

Back

Economic and Management Sciences

Education

Health Sciences

The Humanities

Law

Natural and Agricultural Sciences

Theology and Religion

Open Distance Learning

Business School

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