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.

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: cs@nmmu.ac.za www. cs.nmmu.ac.za Facebook: “NMMU Computing Sciences”

Computing Sciences

Prof Andi le Ngcaba for NMMU

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.

Global Outstanding Service Aw ard

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.

Undergraduate receives Mabinya

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.

Honours student Salomon Koen experimenting with our latest pur-chase, a quadro-copter. His project is about tracking its location using the on board camera information.

Class of 2014— biggest ever! 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.

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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.

Student team in Afr ica Top 10 ACM ICPC Programming Competi t ion

Team “The Finite State Automata” was placed 10th in sub-

Saharan 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.

2015 undergraduate

achievers ’ tour to Cape Town

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.

Top achievers in f i rst year

programming c lass this year !

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).

Global award for

PhD student

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”.