Some of the top performing computer science students at Stellenbosch University were told they are "at the right place at the right time in South Africa" at the annual awards ceremony of the Computer Science Division.
Mr Andrew Baker, a technologist from Barclays and one of the sponsors of the awards, said that, with a technology fund of R6 billion, Barclays used to be a big importer of technology. "We are now sourcing in South Africa. You are at the right place at the right time," he told the students.
Barclays, one of five industry partners at the awards function on 19 March 2015, sponsored the awards for the Best First Year Student (Willem Wilken), the Best Second Year Student (Elrich Groenewald) and the Van der Walt medal for the Best Final Year Student (Pierre le Roux and Chris Coetzee). Mrs Nettie van der Walt, widow of the late Prof APJ van der Walt, presented the medals.
The other industry partners were IBM, Vastech, Praelexis and 4iMobile.
Prof Lynette van Zijl, head of the Computer Science Division in the Department of Mathematical Sciences at SU, said they are excited about having so many industry partners on board, as their involvement provides much-needed practical experience for the students.
One of the oldest industry partners is IBM. Mr Harry Lewis, a software engineer from IBM, said their relationship with SU goes back to the early 1960s when the first mainframe computer was installed at the university. In 2012 IBM established a Software Centre of Excellence at SU to help postgraduate students hone their technical skills.
IBM sponsored the award for the Best Honours Project. This was won by Kanil Patel for the development of Sketchit, a software programme that allows non-programming game players to modify a game like Super Mario. Kanil provided proof-of-concept that a user can design a game level on paper, which Sketchit then converts to an actual game.
Mr Gavin Gray, general manager for research and technology development at Vastech, said they are deeply indebted to the Computer Science Division: "Of our 115 staff members, over a hundred are graduates and postgraduate students from SU," he said. Vastech sponsored the prize for the Best Honours Student, which also went to Kanil Patel.
Mr Herman van Dyk from 4iMobile said they started walking a path with SU in 2015 with the introduction of short courses and internships: "We need more students to go into app development. The moment you think you're on top, you are already six months behind. It is a new and exciting field," he said. The prize for the Best Mobile Systems Development Project, sponsored by 4iMobile, went to Percy Groenewald and Ryno Claassen.
Lastly, Dr McEleroy Hoffman, founder of Praelexis, said it is important for industry and academic departments to take hands in the development of students: "Ultimately we benefit the most from these partnerships," he said. Praelexis sponsored the prize for the Best Machine Learning Project (Jason Scott).
Alex Wright, Gerard Louw, Jacques Marais and Liam Baker received certificates as the best team from Stellenbosch University to have participated in the ACM Collegiate Programming Contest at the University of Cape Town last year. The contest is an annual multi-tiered programming competition among the world's universities, hosted by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and sponsored by IBM.
On the photo, from left to right, Prof Louise Warnich (Dean: Faculty of Science), Chris Coetzee, Mr Andrew Baker (Barclays), Mrs Nettie van der Walt and Pierre le Roux. Photo: Hennie de Villiers
