Welcome to the Research Office

There can be few better ways to tend to the talents of the next generation of scholars than to get a handful of the older guard to do the tending. That about sums up UCT's Visiting and Retired Scholars Mentorship Programme. Funded by the Mellon Foundation and managed by the Research Office, the project allows young academics to pick the brains of some very seasoned veterans, who hail both from UCT stock and from universities elsewhere on the globe. We focus on a couple who have recently served as mentors.

UCT's Alan Pifer Award comes with some exacting demands. According to the adjudicators, the work of 2011 recipient Professor Kelly Chibale on drug discovery in Africa has surpassed those criteria.

A UCT project, PHOtos of Weaver Nests (PHOWN), is aiming to collect photos of all 112 African species of weaver birds.

A recent grant of R150,000 from the Programme for the Enhancement of Research Capacity (PERC) has given just the right nudge.

Dr Shadreck Chirikure rarely gets calls from UCT's senior leadership, so when deputy vice-chancellor Professor Danie Visser phoned him recently he was taken by surprise. It was a good surprise, though. Chirikure, of the Department of Archaeology, had become the third UCT scholar to receive a P-rating from the National Research Foundation (NRF) in the recent round of ratings, along with Dr David Braun and Dr Amanda Weltman. Read more ...

UCT's Information and Communication Technology Services has launched an eResearch website that offers staff and postgraduate students a central point from which to access research support, management tools and information that is currently spread across various web pages at UCT. Read more ...

UCT picked up a quartet of new research chairs from the 60 awarded through the South African Research Chairs Initiative (SARChI) in February.

The Research Office is pleased to announce that UCT has subscribed to Research Professional Africa.

Research Professional Africa is a platform that allows access to the latest global coverage of Research Funding Programmes as well as Science and Technology news and Innovation policies.

Access to the site is via www.research-africa.net.

The University Research Committee (URC) directs the strategic distribution of research funds. Funding is therefore purpose-driven to stimulate and support research endeavour, and covers the full suite of research activity. The diversified categories also assist individual researchers and faculties to plan their research activities and manage the production of their research outputs.

Grants from the US's National Institutes of Health (NIH) are sought-after treasures, but the application procedures are exacting. To improve the success rate and management of grant applications from Africa, the NIH is in 2012 funding a series of training workshops. Two of these will involve UCT and three other African universities - Mbarara University in Uganda, Moi University in Kenya and the University of Zambia (UNZA). Read more ...

UCT has climbed four spots, from 107 in 2010 to 103 this year, on the Times Higher Education (THE) World University Rankings, released on 6 October. The university's strong performance, said vice-chancellor Dr Max Price in a statement, is the direct result of the productivity and impact of UCT's research. Read more ...

The year 2010 was a busy one for UCT researchers, as reported at a recent function hosted by deputy vice-chancellor Professor Danie Visser and the Research Office. Firstly, the Research Report 2010 chronicled some of the year's highlights, including UCT's standing as the country's top producer of accredited research publications. Read more ...

Invented as a symbol of modernity and cultural change, the image of the intellectual is easily parodied. Renowned sociologist Professor Raewyn Connell of the University of Sydney in Australia believes that although the image of the "dissident, boundary-pushing philosopher of the Paris café, smoking Gauloise cigarettes between attempts at revolution", isn't accurate, it's not an entirely absurd image. Read more ...

A senior UCT delegation visited France recently to discuss co-badging degrees (badges of two universities appear on the degree certificate), and ultimately joint degrees in marine science with the l'Université de Bretagne Occidentale (UBO) in Brest and the University of Montpellier (UM2). Read more ...

Emerging Researcher Programme

The Emerging Researcher Programme (ERP) is for academics from entry to Associate Professor level who have not yet achieved a NRF rating and need to develop an research and publishing profile. The programme harnesses the expertise of retired and active professors who offer individual and group mentoring, seminars and workshops on a range of topics from how to publish an article to how to plan a research career. The ERP also offers grants twice a year to support research activities. To date 462 academics have benefitted from the programme and about R3 million of grants are disbursed each year. Academics from other African countries form about 12% of the ERP participants and about one quarter of the grant recipients.

Keeping up the university's stellar track record in the event, three UCT scholars - from six nominations - walked away with honours from the annual National Science and Technology Forum-BHP Billiton Awards, hosted in style in Johannesburg on Thursday night. Read more ...

Please consult our funding opportunities page for current NRF calls.