Peggy House, an educationist, demonstrates the impact of education in a nation and the need to constantly align it to the needs of the times to respond to the needs of a community appropriately as follows:

"The best metaphor for education has been a pendulum. If you close your eyes and visualise a pendulum in motion, you will see that it swings back and forth between two extremes. It moves fastest through the middle part of its path, slowing as it approaches one end where it must momentary come to a stop before gaining momentum in the opposite direction. As it oscillates in one direction, forces are constantly at work exerting pressure to change the direction and speed of the swing in a new arch or new direction, sometimes with the results that the motion runs wild and uncontrollable to an extreme.”

In March 2020, we observed such an event when the Minister of Health Zweli Mkhize confirmed the spread of the COVID-19 Virus in South Africa, with the first known patient tested positive. COVID-19 affects different people in different ways. A pandemic that brought challenges at home and in the workplace. The 9-5 normality with meetings and workplace activities all phased out this was followed by the national lockdown announcement by President Cyril Ramaphosa on 27 March as part our country’s efforts to curb the rapid spread of the Coronavirus in the country. Organisations, companies, hospitals and schools had to strategies on how to sustain businesses, employment and health of their staff and customers.

This occurrence pushed Science and the Science Engagement pendulums back and forth and sometimes to the extremes as the number of death and infections continues to increase on daily bases. The question was how Science and Science Engagement work for can and benefit of society. Thus the issue of a scientifically literate and engaged society was brought to a centre stage more than ever before. The issue of a scientifically literate society became more than just a responsibility but a social responsibility to all of us in the science engagement space, especially the scientists and researchers.

In this regard, we wish to indicate that a quick glance at history reveals that the individuals that impacted their generations and affected the world most dramatically were individuals who, because of circumstances, pressure, or decision, challenged the tide of convention, stretched the boundaries of tradition, and violated the expectations of the norm. Few great things have ever been done within the confines of the accepted norm. It became clear that this is the right time for South African scientists, researchers and research institutions to make a meaningful contribution towards promoting the science of today for the world of tomorrow.

In support of the President’s call to flatten the curve, our organisation announced and introduced the remote working system as all South Africans had to stay at home. We had to comply with the safety of our employees and the nation thus most of our science engagement activities that involves personal contact were put on hold. In order to ensure that the education pendulum continue oscillates smoothly and not runs wild and uncontrollable to an extreme, through Science we introduced new ways of doing business by taking advantage of the immense and rapid digital platform changes. Through online meetings, seminars, debates and competitions to name but few, we managed to keep the science engagement momentum progressing while ensuring the safety of our staff and society.

The overall science sector is also affected with forced changes imposed by the pandemic but it also presented positive challenges that pushes for improvement and new developments. Researchers, scientists, health sciences, communicators and educators are up for innovative ideas challenge to make it work despite the new norm. With the need for new inventions and systems, the science sector contributed and continuing to work with the health sector to communicate and run awareness campaigns aiming to assist with factual information dissemination. We as the NRF-SAASTA are part of this innovative course. We have extended our competitions and debated to the digital platform, held several online mentorship programmes, exhibited online and ran seminars on social media and platforms such as Zoom. We are in the process of digitising a number of our science engagement activities to fast track the digital space normality by also establishing a new Science Promotion Digital Media Facility that aims to share and promote science content.

In the mist of all the challenges, we have also had an opportunity to witnessed the solar eclipse on Monday, 14 December 2020, that was visible in the northern part of South Africa, Pretoria and Johannesburg (if you missed the opportunity, an interesting video is available on our website and social media platforms).

As a business unit of the National Research Foundation (NRF), we managed to sustain jobs and created opportunities for our graduates through grants, internship and volunteer programmes. All these achievements and other projects managed to be effective despite the drastic change on our economy which resulted to budget cuts and strategic shift to enable work flow continuity.

The year 2020 was a lesson and we are learning to apply new dynamics and trends that have been in existence for years but not explored them optimally. It is our aim and objectives to deliver on our mandate to advance public awareness, appreciation and engagement of science, engineering, innovation and technology in South Africa. Indeed, the new norm is no longer new but the prevailing way of conducting ourselves and businesses. Without innovative solutions and intensified support to health systems that focus on the frontline health workers, educators, researchers and scientists, we may continue to see a rise in deaths, and a decrease in economic opportunities in the country. It is uneasy but it is up to us to continue using Science and Science Engagement in supporting our community as they go through this pandemic. Through Science, it’s noted that currently three vaccines and already developed and people being vaccinated in other countries. This is step in the right direction, and through Science and Science engagement, we see some light at the end of the tunnel, through Science and Science engagement lives are being saved. We are mandated to serve and we shall do so with pride and determination.

What makes science engagement impactful and how can we strategically plan to achieve impactful engagement? These questions were unpacked during the NRF-SAASTA’s virtual workshop on science communication strategy on Thursday, 28 May 2020. Still under COVID lockdown, 59 participants from across the country, as well as from other parts of the continent, came together in the virtual space to focus on how to approach developing a science communication strategy.

Robert Inglis from Jive Media Africa facilitated the programme and introduced the participants to his concept on the 6M’s of planning for impactful engagement, namely Measure, Mission, Market, Media, Magic and Message. “In developing a strategy, one needs to consider the context to research and the context of the science engagement, and what one wants to achieve through the communication and engagement,” he explained that from there, one can think about whom one should be engaging to achieve those objectives, what channel or mode of communication will best achieve the objectives, what “magic” can be added to how one communicates and, last but not least, what the key information is that one would like to get across. By systematically thinking through each of these elements, one can more like achieve impactful engagement.

In addressing the element of “Media” and choosing the channel of communication, participants also heard from Pfungwa Nyamukachi, who spoke about The Conversation Africa as a platform to share research findings with a broader public readership. The articles published on The Conversation Africa are picked up and republished under a Creative Commons license by various news agencies around the world. Zamuxolo Matiwana, NRF-SAASTA’s Media Coordinator, also spoke about the partnership NRF-SAASTA has with various community media stations. Hosting NRFSAASTA’s Youth Science Journalism interns, and the importance of the community media in communicating science in indigenous South African languages.

NRF-SAASTA aims to play a key role in the development of science communication skills in scientists, in line with the Department of Science and Innovation’s Science Engagement Strategy objective of promoting and developing science communication to enhance science engagement in South Africa. In addition hosting science communication workshops focusing on various skills, SAASTA is also involved in or hosts various science communication development programmes such as FameLab, the Young Science Communicators competition and the SA Science Lens competition. For more information about workshops visit: https://www. saasta.ac.za/scientists/workshops-and-training.

The Swiss Confederation has mandated the SNSF (Swiss National Science Foundation) to fund research and promote young scientists. The SNSF’s goals is to support high-quality research as well as researchers in their quest for excellence. They also intent to bring research funding closer into line with the researchers’ needs and support the spread of knowledge in society, the economy and politics and demonstrate the value of research. These strategic goals have brought about the recent conclusion of a Lead Agency Agreement between the NRF and Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) introduces a new era of engagements between the agencies, and indeed the respective countries. This agreement is underpinned by a joint endeavour to advance quality, competitiveness, and inclusivity; recognises strong shared commitment; and acknowledge established and recognised systems. The NRF is also the only science council from a developing nation (and Africa) to be recognised to partner in a Lead Agency scheme.

The agreement will allow the two agencies to strategically modify the manner in which reviews and evaluations of funding proposals are conducted. This denotes a high level of trust and understanding of our respective review systems and funding criteria, ethical selection procedures, simplification and procedures, and insight of research outside of the country of selection. All of these characteristics have been strengthened and developed during the agencies’ collaboration during the past years. The intent of the Lead Agency is to allow research funding organisations from two (or more) countries to engage in a cooperation in which one of the organisations involved – the Lead Agency – takes a leading role. Therefore the Lead Agency organisation would be in charge of carrying out the review and evaluation process and approving an application.

The science and technology bilateral with the Swiss started in 2007 with the first call for joint research projects published in 2008. Since its inception the partnership has supported over 50 joint projects between South African researchers and their Swiss counterparts in different areas of study including health, social science and the humanities, as well as sustainability studies. These engagements have also contributed significantly to enhancing and sustaining linkages and networks between higher education institutions of the two countries.

This agreement appreciated by the Honorable Minister of Higher Education, Science and Technology of South Africa, Dr Blade Nzimande and his counterpart the Honorable Swiss Federal Councillor, Guy Parmelin during their virtual meeting held on 27 August 2020. Both the Chief Executive Officers of the NRF, Dr Molapo Qhobela and the President of the SNSF, Dr Matthias Egger, attended the meeting in order to review and reflect on the overall SA-Swiss bilateral research partnership, and in particular the significance of the Lead Agency Agreement between the two funding agencies.

In an effort to fight the COVID-19 global pandemic, the Nelson Mandela Bay Science and Technology Centre (NMBSTC) produced hand sanitisers, face masks and hand lotions with antibacterial as well as antiviral properties.

The NMBSTC hosted IMAfrica Foundation, in partnership with FOI Science and the Mandela Bay Development Agency from the 07th – 13th May 2020. The project produced over 2000 bottles of hand sanitisers, 1000 masks and antibacterial/antiviral lotion.

NMBSTC Manager, Singathwa Kuli said, “We understand the socioeconomic challenges posed by COVID-19; hence we have prioritised employing 15 unemployed members of the community. The objective of the program is to empower these 15 individuals through skills development that will provide sustenance for them and their respective communities during the COVID-19 global pandemic.”
The hand sanitisers will be distributed to local organisations, SMMEs’, NGOs’, the MBDA and schools once they are reopened to facilitate continuous teaching and learning at schools within a healthy and safe environment for both teachers and learners.

NMBSTC strategic objectives provide educational support programmes to teachers and learners, which also include identifying and nurturing poorly resourced schools in the region. Henceforth, “The NMBSTC is well prepared to assist the Department of Basic Education with their curriculum catch-up strategy in ensuring that learners, more especially Grade 12, are well equipped for further studying as the schools reopen on the 1st of June 2020”, said Kuli.

The Science Centre’s role of assisting learners to acquire basic knowledge of Science through developed learning programmes, including Education, Training and Skills Development is deeply needed during the COVID-19 global pandemic.

The Science Centre practicals will be administered at the schools and/or at the Centre upon request from the schools and/or DoE when the curriculum catchup strategy has been publicised. Recorded material/ educational resources will also be made available to schools via NMBSTC social platforms.

Government, in collaboration with the private sector, is putting plans in place to roll out hydrogen fuel cell technologies in various parts of South Africa, as alternative energy sources to the country’s electricity grid.

Speaking in Pretoria , the Director-General of Science and Innovation (DSI), Dr Phil Mjwara, said that such partnerships would enable government to take alternative energy to rural areas, contributing to the growth of the country’s green economy.

The Director-General was speaking at 1 Military Hospital in Pretoria, where the government has set up a field hospital to prepare for a potential increase in COVID-19 patients.

The Department of Science and Innovation (DSI) unveiled seven hydrogen fuel cell systems as the primary power source for the field hospital, which has facilities for testing and screening, as well as life-saving equipment such as ventilators in the intensive care unit.

The project is a partnership between the DSI, the Department of Public Works and Infrastructure, the Department of Defence and private companies like Bambili Energy, which is committed to commercialising intellectual property developed through the DSI’s Hydrogen South Africa (HySA) programme.

Hydrogen fuel cell technologies are globally recognised for their potential to decarbonise the energy and transport sectors. Fuel cells produce electricity by means of a chemical reaction, using hydrogen as the basic fuel and platinum-based catalysts. Besides being efficient and reliable, fuel cells can be deployed rapidly and scaled up easily as the need arises, and their maintenance costs are relatively low.

“Bambili Energy is working on an initiative to take some of these fuels cells to rural areas in the Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal. This is the start, but the idea is to roll the project out to various parts of South Africa,” said Dr Mjwara.

South Africa’s Secretary for Defence, Ambassador Sonto Kudjoe, remarked that the field hospital was now operating using only the fuel cell systems, while the Eskom electricity grid served as back-up.

“It is encouraging that there was an opportunity to scale up the project. We can extend the systems to many parts of country and relieve the burden on Eskom, while transferring skills in the development of hydrogen fuel cells in the country,” said Ambassador Kudjoe.

The support provided to 1 Military Hospital will be complemented by hands-on training, involving government officials and unemployed college graduates with N4 electrical engineering (light and heavy current) qualifications.

Zanele Mavuso Mbatha, CEO of Bambili Energy, expressed excitement at leading the deployment of the fuel cell systems to contribute to government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“This is also an opportunity to demonstrate the potential role alternative energy sources can play in our everyday lives, given South Africa’s growing energy challenges,” said Ms Mavuso Mbatha.

“Bambili Energy believes this collaboration further illustrates the importance attached to the development of the hydrogen economy in South Africa. The growth of this sector also stands to have a material impact on the economy, particularly in regard to employment creation and the development of complementary industries, in its supply chain and many others,” said Ms Mbatha.

Further contributions in the form of methanol and hydrogen for the fuel cell units were received from Air Products South Africa, Protea Chemicals and Sasol.

“We look forward to this exciting partnership, and to working with the Bambili group and the various government departments involved in the project, as well as doing our bit to contribute towards the ongoing fight against COVID-19,” said Pieter Swart, Protea Chemicals Interim Managing Director.

Given its experience in the production and handling of hydrogen, which it uses to produce liquid fuels, fuel gas and chemicals, Sasol will be donating 10 000 litres of methanol and 600 kg of hydrogen monthly until April 2021 to help power the field facility.

“We are deliberately pursuing renewable energy sources through technology, innovation and collaboration, and sustainably produced hydrogen is integral to reducing our carbon footprint across our operations,” said Charlotte Mokoena, Executive Vice President for Human Resources and Corporate Affairs at Sasol.

Other partners in the initiative include South Africa’s HyPlat, Air Products, Singapore’s Horizon Fuel Cell Technologies, the US company Element One, and Powercell Sweden.

General Manager for Packaged Gas at Air Products, Sizwe Nkonde, said their company invests in innovative solutions and supports these clean energy projects. “Furthermore, we are committed to join the fight against the spread of COVID-19”.

The Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), an entity of the Department of Science and Innovation (DSI) – in collaboration with a number of local partners – has completed work on a local ventilator to be rolled out nationwide to patients showing respiratory distress in the early phase of COVID-19 infection.

The development forms part of government’s National Ventilator Project (NVP) under the auspices of the Department of Trade, Industry and Competition (the dtic), and is supported by the Solidarity Fund. The first batch of ventilators will be provided to state hospitals around the country that are currently experiencing pressure due to the unavailability of equipment to deal with the pandemic.

The CSIR solution is a Continuous Positive Airway Pressure (CPAP) device that uses an innovative design to provide a mild level of oxygenated air pressure to keep the airways open and, thus, assist with breathing. The units are non-invasive and fill the need for readily available breathing apparatus, deployed and applied easily – even outside of hospitals if needs be – for intervention in cases where patients are at an early, notintensive stage of respiratory distress caused by the Coronavirus. Therefore, the device can be used in both high-tech clinical environments, as well as temporary settings, such as field hospitals and quarantine facilities that have been established across the country to handle rising COVID-19 cases.

Under the project name, ‘CSIR L.I.F.E.’ (Lung Inspiratory Flow Enabler), the system uses standard, hospital-grade oxygen supply, and features easy-to-use, on-device flow gages to adjust Fraction of Inspired Oxygen in steps of 10% oxygenation.

Design and Manufacture

The device is wholly designed and produced in South Africa by the CSIR and local manufacturing and industry partners such as Siemens, Simera, Akacia, Gabler, Umoya and the University of Cape Town (UCT), with others soon to join.

According to Martin Sanne, Executive Manager of CSIR Future Production: Manufacturing, the clinical requirement from the NVP was for the rapid development and distributed production of a non-invasive preintubation ventilation solution that could be used for most hospitalised COVID-19 patients as part of government’s response plan to the pandemic.

“While ensuring that we achieve this in a short period of time, we had to ensure that we follow a rigorous, documented product lifecycle methodology that would ensure scalable manufacturing, as well as compliance and licensing under the South African Health Products Regulatory Authority (SAHPRA) and guidelines of the World Health Organization,” he says.

Siemens provided the necessary software support for the product lifecycle management, as well as software to facilitate rapid production scaling. This included components for systems engineering processes, computer-aided design tools, manufacturing execution tools, as well as quality management solutions that would ensure compliance with health product regulations for certification. Using a digital product lifecycle design methodology also ensures that the product can be manufactured in multiple factories in the industry and in large volumes.

“This way, we remain true to the role of the CSIR – which is to perform research and development (R&D) that is cutting edge, involves local industry in their niche areas, and ensures that together we address issues that are of national importance,” Sanne explains.

By June, the necessary R&D had been completed and the CPAP system was tested at UCT’s Medical Devices Laboratory, which houses specialised apparatus to evaluate such products. This led to regulatory approval and licensing obtained from the SAHPRA.

During South Africa’s Covid-19 lockdown, the science engagement officer of SAEON’s Egagasini Node, Thomas Mtontsi, organised a two-session web-development tutorial for the SAEON Staff Kids (SSK) club run by SAEON uLwazi.

The tutorial took place over Zoom and certainly would be more challenging in an offline environment – one of the unforeseen benefits of mandatory remote work.

Exploring ideas about the first steps of web development can be lots of fun and I am happy to report that the reception was positive, and (hopefully) there was something for everyone – parents and children alike. As a skill, the reality is that the reason web developers are proliferating everywhere and the reason they tend to be quite young is that building websites – i.e. implementing web technologies – is not actually difficult. The stereotype of the tech-savvy whiz kid, like so many stereotypes, is not incorrect; it is incomplete.

Most early-career web developers today do not act autonomously, yet they still produce immense value as implementers. At SAEON’s uLwazi Node, we hope to go beyond that and to engage in the technology itself, but as always, most of the work is in implementation. That is the message that is worth communicating; that implementing web development is not that difficult and you do not have to be the stereotypical whiz kid to do it.

Building websites is not as difficult as, say, managing a team of people who build websites. It is also not as difficult as writing newsletter articles about building websites.

Computers, like children, need specific instructions in order to work. So specific, in fact, that the actual instructions are typically easy to understand. Computers, unlike children (or, to be fair, most people), are good at remembering long lists of instructions that, when written out, look daunting. And so, a barrier of entry is created where developing the world-wide web is the prerogative of a protected few.

Those who have access to people who can teach web development easily collect web-development skills. And those who cannot find tutoring stare endlessly at the volume of work that makes up web development. Without the tools to effectively pick and choose what to learn, it is difficult to know where to start. This is not how it should be; the web could – and perhaps should – be the collective say of every person who sits in front of a computer for their work.

Tutorials

In our two tutorials, the SSK club discovered the basics of creating a file that contains source code for a webpage – including HTML, CSS and JavaScript (in the same file). We covered what HTML tags are, and why we need to use them. At the end of the day we had a webpage that included a heading, a subheading, a description and photos.

For a retrospective look at the process, the tutorial notes are still available as a Google Doc.

While it is exceedingly difficult is to expose people to development skills without a platform by which to reach them, the work uLwazi produces is open source, which allows for dissecting and disseminating the information systems built professionally to the general public as educational tools. Thus, members of the SSK club could build upon the basic HTML exercises completed during our session using the very tools that SAEON produces. The web-development industry’s best kept secret?

This is a prerogative that few development teams have due to constraints that are well outlined in non-disclosure agreements. The fact that web products are 99% repackaged open source code is … ahem … probably the web-development industry’s best kept secret.

SAEON’s web-based software tools extend the same concepts as introduced in the SSK tutorial (HTML, CSS and JavaScript), as does every other website in the world. Our source code is state-of-the-art, and we would love to share how it works.

We would also like to hear feedback (zach@saeon.ac.za) from anyone on ideas of how to leverage our opensource platform code as an educational tool. Also, we are available to give more information sessions on the work we do.

And most importantly, website building should remain fun!

The International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List of Threatened Species (IUCN Red List) held a workshop in Durban, South Africa from 12-16 August 2019, with participants from various institutions, including the South African Institute for Aquatic Biodiversity, to discuss the extinction risk of species from the Western Indian Ocean.

The assessment workshop conducted on 13 August 2019 determined that Upeneus saiab (Family Mullidae), commonly known as the SAIAB goatfish, endemic off Angoche, northern Mozambique in the Western Indian Ocean (Uiblein and Lisher 2013, Uiblein and White 2015), is considered an endangered species. The SAIAB goatfish was among 29 Mullidae species assessed during the workshop. The List can be accessed at iucnredlist.org.

The SAIAB goatfish is a demersal species that inhabits sandy beaches and occupy nearshore sandy bottoms to live and feed. The species is known from only one location off Angoche, where the major threat identified is overfishing. According to the assessment, the SAIAB goatfish is taken in nearshore fisheries where the level of exploitation is very high, but the impact on this species is not currently quantified. Anecdotal evidence from monitoring catches by these fisheries indicates that the catch has declined over time as a result of overfishing as defined by the Red List methodology. One of the assessors and expert from the National Institute of Fisheries Research (IIP) of Mozambique, Claque Maunde, explained that a secondary threat from mining developments in Sangage is also considered to be a source of pollution that impacts on the nearshore habitats to which this species appears to be restricted. According to the IUCN Assessment Workshop, the species is continuing to decline in the area and therefore is listed as Endangered B1ab (iii,v).

Coming out of this workshop is a strong recommendation that fisheries management and data collection are developed and that dedicated biological studies on this species and research on water quality in the area be conducted urgently. These actions are important to fully understand the fish species composition and abundance within the area around Angoche, which still has a relatively high biodiversity and be able to identify possible conservation measures to protect this species. Citation

Uiblein, F., Everett, B., Maunde, C., Lisher, M., Matiku, P. & Sithole, Y. 2020. Upeneus saiab. The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2020: e.T159145328A159145590. Downloaded on 13 July 2020. Uiblein and Lisher 2013, Uiblein and White 2015. IUCN Red List: https://www.iucnredlist.org/ species/159145328/159145590

Many galaxies far more active than the Milky Way have enormous twin jets of radio waves extending far into intergalactic space. Normally these go in opposite directions, coming from a massive black hole at the centre of the galaxy. However, a few are more complicated and appear to have four jets forming an ‘X’ on the sky.

Several possible explanations have been proposed to understand this phenomenon. These include changes in the direction of spin of the black hole at the centre of the galaxy, and associated jets, over millions of years; two black holes each associated with a pair of jets; and material falling back into the galaxy being deflected into different directions forming the other two arms of the ‘X’. Exquisite new MeerKAT observations of one such galaxy, PKS 2014-55, strongly favour the latter explanation as they show material “turning the corner” as it flows back towards the host galaxy; the results have just been accepted for publication in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Annotated image showing X-shaped giant radio galaxy PKS 2014-55, observed with the South African Radio Astronomy Observatory’s MeerKAT telescope, indicating the old X-shaped radio jets, the younger jets closer to the central black hole, and the region of influence dominated by the central galaxy’s stars and gas. The curved arrows denote the direction of the backflow that forms the horizontal components of the X. Credit: UP; NRAO/AUI/NSF; SARAO; DES.

This work was carried out by a team from the South African Radio Astronomy Observatory (SARAO), the (US) National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO), the University of Pretoria, and Rhodes University.

Previous studies of these unusual galaxies lacked the high quality imaging provided by the recently completed MeerKAT telescope. This telescope array consists of 64 radio dishes located in the Karoo semi-desert in the Northern Cape province of South Africa. Computers combined the data from these antennas into a telescope 8 km in diameter, and provided images in the radio band of unprecedented quality for PKS 2014-55 which enabled solving the mystery of its shape.

Bernie Fanaroff, former director of the SKA South Africa project that built MeerKAT, and a co-author of the study, notes that “MeerKAT was designed to be the best of its kind in the world. It’s wonderful to see how its unique capabilities are contributing to resolving longstanding questions related to the evolution of galaxies.”

Lead author William Cotton of the NRAO says that “MeerKAT is one of a new generation of instruments whose power solves old puzzles even as it finds new ones – this galaxy shows features never seen before in this detail which are not fully understood.” Further research into these open questions is already underway.

Through strong scientific partnerships with South Africa’s iThemba Laboratory for Accelerator Based Sciences (iThemba LABS) and the School of Physics at the University of the Witwatersrand (WITS), Botswana International University of Science and Technology (BIUST) has embarked on a project for visualising, monitoring, and modelling the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic in Botswana.

The Botswana dashboard is managed by Otsile Tikologo, an MSc student who has been trained at iThemba LABS in the application of Monte Carlo methods for designing biological shielding for nuclear particles and radiation. Tikologo is also heavily involved in training his counterparts in Namibia, Zimbabwe, and Mozambique to setup and manage their own COVID-19 dashboards. “We are proud of the fact that our dashboard has been designated as the official dashboard for the COVID-19 Presidential Task Force of the Republic of Botswana,” says Professor Gregory Hillhouse, Head of the Department of Physics and Astronomy at BIUST. “In addition to visualisation aspects, we are working closely with iThemba LABS and Wits to use the data for model predictions that will inform policy and decision makers in Botswana.”

The nature of the collaborative COVID-19 project is interdisciplinary, where medical data and expertise need to be combined with a wealth of methodologies and algorithms used in advanced analytics, Big Data and Data Science.

Assumptions used in the project revolve around our current level of understanding of advanced analytics driven by Data Science and other disciplines. Both mainstream statistical frameworks, frequentist and Bayesian are an underlying assumption to model development. Input from the different medical, virology and custodians of static data pertaining to populations, social and medical vulnerabilities, access to medical infrastructure, prevalence of various relevant preexisting conditions are also underlying assumptions.

“The project encapsulates methodologies in Data Science and Artificial Intelligence that effectively combine medical and other data to provide a comprehensive synthetic view of the predictive landscape,” says Professor Bruce Mellado of Wits University and iThemba LABS.

The chief goal of the project is to control the number of people infected, hospitalisations, ICU admissions and mortality. These outcomes are predicted as a function of non-pharmaceutical interventions in the post-lockdown period to allow for the economy to reactivate.

Analytical and predictive tools developed by these projections will assist policy makers to enact rules and regulations with which to revive economic activity while preventing a massive outbreak of the virus. This is essential to alleviate the economic impact of the virus in African countries, in particular to slow down the rate of job losses.

The above foray into the COVID-19 project has emerged as a natural extension to existing collaborative links between BIUST, iThemba LABS, and Wits University, through official Memoranda of Understanding in the areas of Big Data, Nuclear Physics, Radiochemistry, Collider Physics, and Materials Science. One of the successes of this collaboration includes the first Motswana student, Gaogalalwe Mokgatitswane [Supervisors: Dr. Kureba (BIUST), Prof. Mellado (Wits and iThemba LABS)] to complete an MSc research project, and who is currently pursuing a PhD, at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) which operates the largest and most advanced particle physics laboratory in the world.

“It is gratifying to see that the transferable Physics skills that I acquired during my MSc project at CERN can be applied to develop predictive models for informing the health and economic sectors of countries.” says Mokgatitswane, whose PhD degree at Wits focusses on employing sophisticated data analysis frameworks together with the state-of-the-art Artificial Intelligence techniques to search for new exotic particles from huge amounts of data recorded by the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider facility at CERN.

A further highlight of the collaboration with iThemba LABS is that Adolf Motetshwane [Supervisors: Prof. Hillhouse (BIUST), Dr. Steyn (iThemba LABS)] is the first Botswana student to complete an MSc degree using the proton beams at iThemba LABS to study production yields of radioisotopes for medical applications.

The importance of accurate and speedy testing in stopping COVID-19 virus cannot be overstated. Apparently, one of the most reliable and widely used laboratory methods for testing for COVID-19 virus is a nuclear-derived technique called REAL-TIME REVERSE TRANSCRIPTION-POLYMERASE CHAIN REACTION (RT-PCR) and many countries are working with the International Atomic Energy Agency to use this technique. With my Nuclear Physics background I am prepared to collaborate with researchers from other fields, especially Biological and Chemical Sciences and start the ball rolling for applying this technique locally.” says Adolf Motetshwane who is currently working on his PhD project at iThemba LABS.