Cape Town – Members of the scientific fraternity gathered at the research facility of the Department of Science and Technology (DTS), iThemba Labs, to celebrate a decade of collaboration between South Africa and the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (Cern), yesterday.
The celebrations took place at the opening of a three-day conference, in commemoration of the launch of the SA-Cern collaboration programme on December 15, 2008 and mapped a strategic path forward.
Since the launch of the programme, it has established a strong footprint and visibility at the largest open research facility in the world.
iThemba Labs director Faical Azaiez said: “We have the capacity to train young and emerging black and female scientists to be at the level and impact science wherever it’s done.”
Azaiez said iThemba Labs had proposed to introduce an institute of nuclear science and technology at its premises in Old Faure, near the N2 highway.
Cern, based in Switzerland, is a central facility for physics research serving about 7000 scientists, representing 500 institutions and more than 90 nationalities.
The programme offering international research opportunities has seen black student representation increase from 35% in 2014 to 65% for next year, and women’s representation is expected to spike from 30% in 2015 to 50% next year. Joyful Mdhluli, 22, a Wits University PhD student in nuclear solid state physics, said she had been a beneficiary of the programme and had visited Cern.
“My experience has been different, as when I started, physics was an additional module that I found fascinating and it became my major. I found there were very few women, especially black women, but in the end it’s all about the science when it comes to Cern,” she said.
Thomas Auf der Heyde, the DTS deputy director-general for research development and support, said the SA-Cern programme (physics) and SKA (astronomy) were both large international initiatives that no country could do alone.
South Africa was doing it on an equal footing, he said.
“We are at the beginning stages, as both projects generate huge amounts of data, which requires new capacities, technologies and methodologies for managing that data.
‘‘A few months ago, SKA and Cern signed an agreement that they would co-operate in this field, and we are at the centre of these discussions,” he said.