Dear Associates and Friends of NITheCS,
As you know, NITheCS is a geographically diverse institute and we have Associates at almost all South African universities. Operating from a unified platform will make collaboration easier. We are therefore deploying Google Workspace for Education, which will give us further access to Google’s tools and functionality. In future, we will use Google Classroom for our schools, mini-schools and SATACS courses. Our Associates and students can also each get a Google account linked to a NITheCS email address. We will provide further details when the process is complete.
We continue to present regular discussions and other events to align with those of the International Year of Basic Science for Sustainable Development. Recently there have been two important panel discussions: ‘Strengthening the presence and visibility of women’ (22 August) and ‘Strengthening Education and Scientific Training in the Basic Sciences’ (12 September).
NITheCS has also been busy on numerous other fronts, including the following:
We helped support Career Fest 2022, an online event to inform high school students about various careers and vocations.
Under our Scientific Seminar Series, I presented the ‘Bad vibrations: Quantum tunnelling and SARS‐CoV‐2 infections’ lecture at the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study (STIAS) and online. It was held in collaboration with SU’s Medicine and Health Sciences and School for Data Science and Computational Thinking, the Centre for Epidemic Response and Innovation (CERI) and the KwaZulu-Natal Research Innovation and Sequencing Platform (KRISP) at UKZN.
We presented NITheCS and its activities at the Astronomy Town Hall meeting attended by all role-players in astronomy in South and Southern Africa on 8 and 9 September.
Our colloquia and workshops of the past weeks included among others the mini-school under the leadership of Amartya Goswami (UJ) and Zurab Janelidze (SU) on the topic ‘Elementary Introduction to Set Theory’.
As always, details about our past and future events are available under the ‘Events’ tab on our website and they are also detailed in this newsletter.
Now that the COVID-19 epidemic has relaxed its hold on society, it is easier to meet ‘in person’ again. NITheCS is particularly delighted to be participating in the AI Expo Africa on 19 and 20 September. AI Expo Africa is ‘the largest business focused Artificial Intelligence (AI), Robotic Process Automation (RPA) and 4IR trade event in Africa’. Come and look in and say hello to us there!
Our best wishes go to our ever-growing community of supporters, Associates, Junior Associates, collaborators and other friends. All our activities are directed at supporting the scientific community of today and tomorrow: so we thank all our friends for your contributions towards our activities.
Francesco Petruccione