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06 November 2023
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Story MBALI MABOEA
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Photo SUPPLIED
The Department of Geography on the UFS Qwaqwa Campus recently played host to the Society of South African Geographers Conference (SSAG 2023), which gathered more than 100 students over three days.
Fostering academic growth, collaboration, and inspiration among students and researchers in the field of geography, the Department of Geography on the UFS Qwaqwa Campus recently played host to the Society of South African Geographers Conference (SSAG 2023), which gathered more than 100 students over three days.
Following a five-year hiatus, the three-day conference comprised student proposal presentations in different fields: human geography, environment geography, geoinformatics, and physical geography, divided into breakaway sessions over two days. Furthermore, day three of the annual conference included an excursion to the Basotho Cultural Village and Clarens.
The three-day annual student conference focused on different themes presented by two main speakers. The topic of the first keynote speaker, Dr Mahlomola Daemane, General Manager of the SANParks Arid Research Unit, focused on the contemporary conservation, transition, and relevance of science in policy and decision making.
The second keynote speaker was Dr Felicia Akinyemi, a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Research Fellow affiliated with the Institute of Geography at the University of Bern in Switzerland. Her work focuses on the intersection of geoinformatics, global change, and sustainability. Dr Akinyemi focused her talk on the integrative geospatial methods and metrics for sustainable land use. She introduced different techniques and metrics and gave students insight in early-career African research.
Speaking about the success of the conference, Nthebohiseng Sekhele, Geography Lecturer on the Qwaqwa Campus and chair of the organising committee, said, “The local organising committee was also very impressed with the quality of presentations from our postgraduate students in Geography, as well as the robust discussions that happened during the parallel sessions in the two days of the conference. We had a positive response of physical and online participation from many universities across South Africa. We are pleased that we have achieved our goal with this conference, which is to inspire the next generation of geographers.”
Robotic telescope at Boyden Observatory
2005-08-17
Technicians from the University College Dublin in Ireland recently installed the Watcher robotic telescope at the University of the Free State's (UFS) Boyden Observatory.
The UFS Boyden Observatory was approached by the University College Dublin to accommodate the Watcher robotic telescope because of its good position for modern astronomical observations, its good infrastructure and because of Bloemfontein's cloudless nights
(especially in winter).
The telescope will mainly be used for observing the optical afterglow of gamma ray bursts (awe-inspiring explosions in the universe) and to search for exo planets (planets around other stars).
The work that will be done with Watcher will closely link to one of the research directions of the UFS astro physics group that is currently observing these phenomenon with the Boyden 1.5-m telescope.
The telescope will receive its instructions via the internet and is expected to be fully operational by November 2005.
At the Watcher robotic telescope are from left Mr Victor Litera, electronical technician from the University College Dublin in Ireland and Dr Matie Hoffman from the Physics Department at the UFS.