Wits alumni excel as A-rated researchers
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2021 NFR Awards celebrate the country’s top researchers.
The National Research Foundation (NRF) hosted the prestigious celebration of South African research excellence through the NRF Awards on 2 November 2021. Five Wits alumni were among the seasoned A-rated researchers.
Held annually, the NRF Awards recognises individual researchers and teams for outstanding achievements that have had an impact on society. Their internationally competitive work is assessed with a strong emphasis on its quality and impact.
This year the NRF hosted a hybrid event with limited in person guests in Pretoria and live-streamed to more than 500 virtual attendees. The ceremony celebrated 68 awardees across 10 categories.
Wits alumnus and NRF chief executive officer Dr Fulufhelo Nelwamondo (BSc Eng 2005, PhD 2008) reflected on the progress made by scientists over the past few months: “The increasing challenges faced due to the COVID-19 outbreak as well as other societal challenges have not only underscored the importance of research in society, but also shone a very bright light on the ability of our scientists, both established and those just starting out on their research paths, to rise to the occasion…a reminder to ourselves that science remains the key to a reimagined, innovative future. Let us continue to do worthwhile work by advancing knowledge, transforming lives and inspiring a nation!” he said.
A-Rated alumni researchers
2020: Professor Quarraisha Abdool Karim (BSc Hons 1984), based at the AIDS Programme of Research in South Africa at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, received a second A-rating. Professor
Abdool Karim is one of the world’s foremost public health authorities in the field of HIV/AIDS research and is a renowned advocate for the rights of adolescent girls and young women and people living with HIV. Her awards include the TWAS-Lenovo Science Prize; DST 2011 Women in Science Award; L’Oreal-UNESCO Women in Science Laureate for Africa and the Middle East; the African Academy of Science’s Olusegun Obasanjo Prize; John Dirks-Canadian Gairdner Global Health Award; Christophe Merieux Award (French Academies of Medicine), ASSAf Science for Society Gold Medal; Bernard Hirschel Award (Royal Society of South Africa), the Order of Mapungubwe and two honorary doctorates.
2021: Professor Roger Smith (MSc 1982) from the Department of Geological Sciences at the Iziko Museums of South Africa and based at based at the Evolutionary Studies Institute at Wits received his second A-rating.
Professor Smith’s research speciality is to combine field-generated geological and palaeontological data into reconstructions of ancient ecosystems and landscapes. In 1996, he was the first to publish that this mass extinction event was evident in the terrestrial rocks and tetrapod fossils of the southern Karoo. In 2012, he was awarded a Research and Exploration Grant from the National Geographical Society. Most recently he published findings from a study of fossils (which included over 100 eggs and skeletal specimens of 80 individuals of the early sauropodomorph Mussaurus patagonicus, ranging from embryos to fully-grown adults) from Patagonia in Nature. The discovery indicates “the presence of social cohesion throughout life and age-segregation within a herd structure, in addition to colonial nesting behaviour”. These findings provide the earliest evidence of complex social behaviour in dinosaurs.
Professor Bob Scholes (BSc 1978, BSc Hons 1979, PhD 1988), who was based at the Global Change and Sustainability Research Institute, received a posthumous third A-rating. Professor Scholes was an internationally recognised authority on the ecology of African savannas and the impacts of global change on terrestrial ecosystems, particularly in Southern Africa. He was a major contributor to the conceptualisation, development and implementation of integrated Earth Observation Systems. He also helped to conceptualise, develop and lead major science-policy interface processes and institutions. In 2020, he was named one of the most highly cited scientists in the world as he was among the top 1% of environmental scientists worldwide based on citation frequency.
Professor Mark Solms (BA 1984, BA Hons 1985, MA 1984, PhD 1992), chair in neuropsychology at the Department of Psychology at the University of Cape Town, received his third A-rating. His research focus is the brain mechanisms of consciousness and emotion.
Widely published in technical scientific journals as well as popular magazines such as Scientific American, Professor Solms has also published five books. His Clinical Studies in Neuro-Psychoanalysis (2000, Routledge) won the Gradiva Award for Best Book in the Science Category in 2001; his The Brain and the Inner World (2002, Routledge) is a best-seller and has been translated into 13 languages. He is the authorised editor and translator of the forthcoming revised 24-volume Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud and the four-volume edition (in both English and German) of Freud’s Complete Neuroscientific Works. He was named International Psychiatrist of the year 2000 by the American Psychiatric Association. Recently he published The Hidden Spring: a Journey to the Source of Consciousness (Profile, 2021).
Professor Charles van Onselen (BA Hons 1971) based at the Institute for the Advancement of Scholarship at the University of Pretoria received his fourth A-rating. Professor van Onselen is an internationally renowned historian who has been the recipient of several prestigious national and international prizes for his scholarly work, dating back as far as 1984. In 2017, he was awarded the Human Sciences Research Council’s Gold Medal for a Distinguished Contribution to the Social Sciences and Humanities in South Africa. In 1997, his work, The Seed is Mine, won the Sunday Times Alan Paton Prize for Non-Fiction and was awarded the Bill Venter Literary Award for the best book published by an author in a South African University in the field of Arts and the Social Sciences. This work was also honoured by the African Studies Association of the US when it was awarded the Herskovits Prize in 1998. Earlier in 2021, he was was awarded the 2021 Academy of Science of South Africa Humanities Book Award for his book The Night Trains: Moving Mozambican Miners to and from South Africa, circ 1902-1955.
Sources: NRF and Wits archives