News
:: 2009 Departmental News
Introduction
Welcome to the news items at the department. These pages will be updated
as frequently as possible. Any news or events of interest can be
posted to Dr E Cloete for publication on this page.
Latest Information Systems Items
2008 News Items
February 2008
2007 News Items
21/12/2007 Pictures from the IS PhD Graduation Function
Follow this link for the photos.
21/11/2007 Pictures from the 2007 IS Expo
Follow this link for the photos.
31/10/2007 FTHons Class of 2007
Follow this link for
a nice wrap of presentation about FTHons 2007.
18/10/2007 2007 IS Honours Finalists
Below are some pictures of this year's IS Honours Finalists.
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21/08/2007 Kevin Johnston (HOD of Dept of Information Systems) gets invited
by the Free State Provincial Government!!
The Free State Provincial Government invited KJ to be one of the guest
speakers at the upcoming Third Provincial Senior Management Service
Conference to be held in Bloemfontien during 30-31 August 2007. The
Conference theme is 'Implementing Government Strategies & Programmes: The
key to improve service delivery to the people of the Free State'.
05/07/2007 Keep on Swimming Chris!
Congratulations to IS Full Time Honours Student Christopher King for
being selected to represent the South African Student swimming team by SASSU
at the Universiade (World Student Games) in Bangkok Thailand from 3 August
2007 to 18 August 2007.
05/07/2007 Congratulations Ferowza!
Congratulations to IS Full Time Honours Student Ferowza Bowren on her
marriage to Nizaam
08/12/2006 Information Systems students win Microsoft Contest
 Team
Think Tank won the first prize in the category Software Design, at the national
project Firefly competition of Microsoft in Johannesburg, on Monday evening, 4th
December 2006. The team comprise five third year Business Science students:
Glynn Allen; Megan Bruyns; Craig Mackintosh; Humbulani Dombo; Dori Kawalsky, all
majoring in Information Systems at the University of Cape Town. The Firefly cup
competition is an endeavour of Microsoft to encourage and support academic
faculties and students undertaking projects in the latest technologies and to
reward excellence. In this category students must demonstrate a comprehensive
knowledge of programming and their application should solve a real-world
business problem. Not only did the team win the first prize in their category,
but they were also selected as one of the four top student groups to represent
South Africa at the international Imagine Cup competition in Korea in August
2007. The theme for the Imagine Cup 2007 (
http://www.imaginecup.com
) is: Imagine a world where technology enables a better education for all.
The software development project of team Think Tank is exactly in line with this
theme. The teams project, aptly called InterGreat, was designed to assist the
currently very laborious manual administrative function of the Go for Gold
education programme by providing information management, scheduling, reporting,
transaction recording and various other capabilities to the program.
The Go for Gold programme was formed in 1999 with the aim of addressing the
critical shortage of suitable candidates from disadvantaged communities for
entry into the construction, building and engineering fields. It was identified
that many of the students seeking to enter these fields lacked the science and
mathematics foundations and often even the basic life skills necessary for
success in the world of work. A unique partnership was therefore established
between the construction sector and the Western Cape Education Department,
allowing for the creation of alliances between various corporate bodies and
industry organisations.
For more information on Project Firefly visit
http://www.projectfirefly.co.za/
Some news items from the first quarter 2006
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Datacentrix have offered bursaries (for 2nd, 3rd
and 4th year students) for two previously disadvantaged students
starting in 2006.
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Chase Software would like to partner an IS
student throughout their studying year's and get them to do
internship with us during their vacs, starting in 2007.
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Ruwanga Jayakody was offered and accepted a job
with JP Morgan Bank on the basis of an ER he wrote during his Hons
year at UCT.
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Steve Vosloo (currently doing masters) has been
accepted onto the Digital Vision Program at Stanford University
based on his UCT Hons.
IS Department to host SACLA 2006
The Department of Information Systems is proud to be
hosting the annual Southern African Computer Lecturers Association
Conference in June 2006. More details are available on the
conference website.
2005-2006 Staff movements
Kevin Johnston has been appointed as the Head of Department
from 1 January 2006. Towards the end of 2005, the Department celebrated the
promotion of Irwin Brown to Associate Professor and Lisa Seymour to Senior
Lecturer as well as the arrival of two new staff, Kosheek Sewchurran and
Michael Kyobe. Prof Derek Smith is taking sabbatical leave until the end of
2006 and Jane Nash until mid year 2006. Eric Cloete is taking sabbatical in
the second semester. Well deserved!
08/11/2005 - Students Design Radio Frequency
Identification Timer
Out of the box: The winning IS honours team, BreadBox Solutions (from
left) Lee Ingram (programmer), Simon Rentzke (programmer), Adrian
Hope-Bailie (head programmer), and Robert Stothers (head documenter and
quality controller) and Shane Thorp (project leader). (Onyx took second
place and Salient Dimension was third.)
It's the highlight of the information systems calendar: third-year and
honours students strutting their stuff at the annual exposition in the
Jameson Hall. This year the winning honours group didn't disappoint,
clocking a mega 95% for their project, a unique software solution for the
Western Province Karting Club (WPKC).
The club operates from the Killarney race track, one of seven clubs
countrywide. But they were struggling under the yoke of a rented proprietary
timing system, with its heavy price tag and restrictive programing.
Under the banner of BreadBox Solutions, the students, Shane Thorp, Adrian
Hope-Bailie, Simon Rentzke, Lee Ingram and Robert Stothers, designed an
alternative timing system, incorporating a comprehensive implementation plan
and quality-control measures. The saving to the club will amount to R300 000
over five years.
The proprietary system the club was using was a rigid generic, leaving
karting officials disgruntled and without any control over how race results
and championship tallies were updated or viewed. It didn't provide a
competitors' database either, a headache for the club, which often fields
more than 1 000 competitors at race meetings.
Significantly, the team's radio frequency identification (RFID) system,
which uses a tag transponder and passive RFID tags on the karts, is a first
for South African kart racing circles, where the karts reach speeds of more
than 120km/hr. There are other circuits using the RFID technology - the Indy
500 for one, a championship kart race in the US.
BreadBox Solutions' modular systems design, called Kronos (after the Greek
god of time), allows local users to interface with several hardware systems.
It cuts out expensive transponder units in favour of the cheaper RFID tag
system, produced locally.
The students' solution means the club can keep accurate records of all timed
laps and events throughout the year. They are also able to display results
and forthcoming events on the Internet or the WPKC website.
"Many of the clubs still face the nightmare of timing competitors using
Excel spreadsheets or manual training methods," group leader Shane Thorp
said. "It's laborious, time-consuming, unwieldly to manage and prone to
error."
The new system also complies with the South African Racing Regulations, and
the students are hoping to implement it once it has passed the Motorsport
South Africa-regulated criteria and mandates.
The project brings to an end (academically that is) months of hard slog.
There were some head-scratching moments for the five. The group struggled to
find hardware donor for the development phase until Ipico Technologies came
through.
BreadBox Solutions' system is good news for the country's thriving karting
circuit, bearing in mind that Formula One racing giants Michael Schumacher
and Fernando Alonso started as kart racers.
The UCT team is chuffed: "There's always an unofficial competition among IS
students, group leader Shane Thorp said. "Getting into the top three is the
main aim."
But their performance took the chequered flag.
18/08/2005 - UCT/CSIR Scholarship Programme - 15 September
2005
Applications are invited for a limited number of
scholarships for South African students who will register in 2006 at the
University of Cape Town for the Honours, Master's and Doctoral degrees,
within the following disciplines:
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Information and Communication Technologies
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Environmental Technologies
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Natural Sciences
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Materials Science
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Engineering
Applicants are invited to submit an application pack to
The Director, Postgraduate Centre & Funding Office, Level 3,
Otto Beit, Upper Campus
For further enquiries please contact the office at
E-mail:
gradcentre@uct.ac.za
Telephone: 021-650-2211
14/06/2005 - The Apprentice - IS Honours Graduate 2002 - Ismail
Hendriks is taking part!
Hired and fired!
The local version of The Apprentice is currently being shown on SABC3.
Tokyo Sexwale will be putting 16 candidates through the paces for the job of
a lifetime. One of the candidates, Ismail Hendricks graduated with a
Business Science Information Systems Honours degree from UCT in 2002. 25-year-old
Ismail is currently a business analyst employed by a major bank in South
Africa. Acording to Ismail "Just being part of the show is an accomplishment
on its own, otherwise, plans are to evaluate all the opportunities that may
arise and I will make my decisions accordingly."
From The Star Tonight Gauteng, June 8, 2005
http://www.tonight.co.za/index.php?fSectionId=433&fArticleId=2550209
06/05/2005 - Open Day 2005 - School Learners to win
cool prizes!
Click
here for more details
2005/03/19 - SAPs 46664 concert treat
 SAP provided free VIP tickets for 13
students to attend the 46664 concert in George in March 2005. Lisa,
Kechil and Adrie stepped in to organise the event which included an
overlander truck, complete with tents and guys to make the campfire. As
the pictures show, a fabulous time was had by all. The only hitch was
that the security were reluctant to allow a truckload of excited
students entry into the VIP car park. Now why would that be? Thanks, SAP
it was a real treat. (Message by KK)
More pictures - click here |
2005/03/04 - Dr. Mikko Korpela
 Dr. Mikko Korpela recently gave a talk at
the Information Systems seminar series on 'Experiences in Information
Systems Research in Healthcare in Africa and in Finland: Projects
and Methodologies'
Dr. Korpela is Research Director
of the Healthcare Information Systems Research and Development Unit,
University of Kuopio, Finland, and a Docent at the Department of
Computer Science of the same university. He is also a member of
IFIP WG 8.2 and was founding secretary of IFIP WG 9.4. Dr Kirpelas
research interests include West African political history, work
development, and information systems development particularly in
healthcare.
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2005/02/06 - Dutch student excels in South African
e-Commerce study
Martin Doens, an exchange student from
Tilburg University in the Netherlands, recently completed his masters
study in Electronic Commerce, under the supervision of Dr Eric Cloete.
He spent six months of his study year (2004) at UCT, gathering material
for the thesis 'The Current State of B2B E-Marketplace Adoption in
South African Agriculture'.
Martin graduated with distinction.
Congratulations from all of us at
Information Systems, UCT!
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