Computing Sciences
P r o f An d i l e N g c a b a f o r N M M U
The talking head
The Department of Computing Sciences is a vibrant
department, and we work hard to provide our students
with an excellent qualification while they are with us.
We are honoured to announce Prof Andile Ngcaba as our department's first ever
Adjunct Professor. Prof Ngcaba serves as executive chairman of Dimension Data
Middle East and Africa and Convergence Partners Investments. He was born in
Duncan Village, East London and has always been very active in the Eastern Cape
ICT environment.
I would like to highlight the following.
We offer 7 BSc and BCom undergraduate computing
degrees. After obtaining an undergraduate qualification,
our students can continue with their Honours, Masters
and PhD studies in the department.
With 12 of our lecturers who have a PhD qualification, we
are one of the best qualified computing departments in
the country.
Our students have daily access to 6 undergraduate and 5
postgraduate laboratories, containing nearly 400 PC’s.
Some of our research equipment include a usability lab,
an eye tracker, a 42 inch multi-touch screen as well as
various robots and mobile devices.
We strive to provide a holistic experience to our students
through activities such as guest lectures by our industry
partners, programming competitions, industry visits and
extra-curricular workshops.
You are always welcome to pay us a visit.
We look forward to welcoming you!
Prof Jean Greyling
Head of Department
For further information:
Phone: +27 (0)41 504 2247
Fax: +27 (0)41 504 2831
Email: [email protected]
www. cs.nmmu.ac.za
Facebook: “NMMU Computing Sciences”
Class of 2014— biggest ever!
G l o b a l O u t s t a n d i n g S e r v i c e Aw a r d
Prof Janet Wesson was officially
awarded the IFIP TC13
Outstanding Service Award by the
chairman of TC13, Jan Gulliksen,
at their business meeting held in
Tampere, Finland. Prof Wesson
has been the South African
representative for the past 15
years. TC13 focuses on Human
Computer Interaction.
Honours student Salomon Koen
experimenting with our latest purchase, a quadro-copter. His project
is about tracking its location using
the on board camera information.
U n d e r g r a d u a t e r e c e i v e s M a b i n ya
Scholarship
Undergraduate Nqobizwe Ngubane received the Mabinya Scholarship,
privately sponsored by Alumnus Baxolile Mabinya and his wife Elize.
Baxolile completed his Masters in 2007 and is currently Group Strategy
Executive for
Dimension Data
Middle East and
Africa.
Congratulations to our 79 students graduating this year the biggest group of graduates from our department ever.
Simone Beets, Patrick Tchankue and Tony Simpson will
be awarded their doctorates on Friday 17 April.
Raspberry Pi students WIN BIG
Four of our students won R7500 each for creating a one of a kind electronic system by using a Raspberry Pi. This competition
and total prize money worth R50 000, was personally sponsored by Prof Andile Ngcaba, Chairman for Dimension Data Middle
East and Africa. Their Power Monitor project aims to provide users with the ability to keep track of their electricity usage.
To p a c h i e v e r s i n f i r s t ye a r
p r o g r a m m i n g c l a s s t h i s ye a r !
Pull
S t u d e n t t e a m i n Af r i c a To p 1 0
AC M I C P C P r o g r a m m i n g C o m p e t i t i o n
Team “The Finite State Automata” was placed 10th in subSaharan Africa and 1st in the Eastern Cape. 87 teams from
various countries participated in the competition. The team
consisted of Simon Urban, Michael Hatherley and Michael
McQuirk.
Global aw ard for
PhD student
From left: Nathan Watt (1st IT, Victoria Park), James Roberts
(1st IT, Queen's), Ruan Olivier (1st Grade 12, Despatch),
James Westraadt (2nd IT & 2nd Grade 12, Alexander Road),
Antin Phillips (1st IT, Grey & 1st Eastern Cape, Computer
Olympiad), Carl Meyer (1st IT, Outeniqua) and Kevin May
(1st IT, Stirling).
Kayode Ayankoya won a global
blogging competition sponsored by
SAP. His topic was the role of Big
Data in mining, and he received an all
expenses paid trip to Germany to
attend a SAP conference.
Minister opens new laboratory
The Minister of Science and Technology, Mrs Naledi Pandor,
opened our Broadband Communication and Computational
Intelligence Laboratory on Thursday 26 March. Masters
student Grant Woodford had time to show her his “Snake
Robot”.
2015 undergraduate
a c h i e v e r s ’ t o u r t o C a p e To w n
Prof Jean Greyling accompanied Justin Kelly, Jacques
Potgieter and Salomon Koen on a sponsored tour to Cape
Town.
At the different companies they attended a project meeting,
listened to various presentations on different computing
careers and had informal discussions with many Alumni.
Thank you to Korbitec, Open Box and ACI for sponsoring the
tour. These companies annually employ many of our
students.