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 AMSEN: African Materials Science and Engineering Network
About AMSEN Leaders and their Institutions
Blog Entries about AMSEN
AMSEN in the News
Awards and Honors for AMSEN Members P. K. Jain has been elected to the fellowship of the Institute of Physics (IoP), UK by the IoP Council in recognition of his “personal contribution to the advancement of physics as a discipline and a profession.” (2010) Lesley Cornish was invited to join the Executive of the African Materials Research Society (African MRS). (2010)
Selected AMSEN Publications and Workshops M.B. Shongwe, B. Odera, S. Samal, A.M. Ukpong, A. Watson, R. Suss, L.H. Chown, G.O. Rading, and L.A. Cornish, "Assessment of microstructures in the development of Pt-based superalloys." Light Metals Conference. October 27-20, 2010. Misty Hills, Muldersdrift, South Africa. Prof. P. K. Jain, "Entrepreneurship Education for Scientists and Engineers in Africa," Science with Africa conference, hosted by UNECA, Addis Ababa. June 24, 2010. SEM and EDX Analysis: Demonstration and Practice. Workshop at University of Botswana. April 19-23, 2010. “The Effect of Nitration of TiO2 Thin Film on the Efficiency of TiO2/In(OH)xSy/Pb(OH)xSy Nano-Composite Solar Cell”. Presented at the U. Botswana AMSEN Workshop, Gaborone, Botswana, 13th to 23rd April 2010. Presentations on Materials Science Research, Tutorials on Phase diagrams, and EDX analysis. Workshop at University of Botswana. April 13-16, 2010. Jain, P. K., "Sustainable Development: Energy Matters," University of Botswana. March 31, 2010. “The behaviour of Sugar Cane Waste Ash as a Cementing Material”. Presented at International Symposium on Modernizing Local Sustainable Technologies, Nairobi, Kenya, 25th to 26th February 2010.
O. Olaniran (FUTA), “Development of nano-structured parts by spin –casting method”, O.A. Olaseinde, A.M. Ukpong, L.A. Cornish, J.W. van der Merwe and P.A. Olubambi, The Effect of Minor Ru Additions on the Phase Properties in Selected Duplex Stainless Steels, 5th International Conference of the African Materials Research Society, Book of Abstracts, p. 123, Abuja, Nigeria, 14th – 18th December 2009, paper in press. S.H. Coetzee, “Progress on the Liquidus Surface Diagram for the Ni-Ru-V System”, Microscopy Society of Southern Africa Conference. Durban, South Africa. December 8-11, 2009. A.O. Apata, L.A. Cornish and M.J. Witcomb, An Investigation of As-cast V-C-Ni Alloys, Proceedings of the Microscopy Society of Southern Africa Conference, Volume 39, p. 60, Durban, 8th – 11th December 2009. B.O. Odera, L.A. Cornish, R. Süss and G.O. Rading, A Study of Phases in Selected Alloys from the Pt-Al-V System in the Pt-rich Corner, Proceedings of the Microscopy Society of Southern Africa Conference, Volume 39, p. 61, Durban, 8th – 11th December 2009. George Rading and Lesley Cornish, "AMSEN: A Carnegie-IAS RISE Project", African Universities Day, University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa. November 12, 2009. Frank Kavishe, "African Materials Science and Engineering Network (AMSEN): Organization and Challenges", MacArthur Workshop. Abuja, Nigeria. November 11, 2009. Lesley Cornish, "DST/NRF Centre of Excellence in Strong Materials and AMSEN: Experiences of an African Network", TWAS 11th General Conference. Durban, South Africa. October 20-23, 2009. Lesley Cornish and Frank Kavishe, "Genesis of a New Network: African Materials Science and Engineering Network (AMSEN)" (PowerPoint here).Presented at the Regional and Interregional Cooperation to Strengthen Basic Sciences in Developing Countries Conference. United Nations Conference Centre, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. September 12-4, 2009. (Full conference proceedings available here.)
Bernard Odera and Adenike Olaseinde. Presentations at the Advanced Metals Initiative Student Seminar. Mintek, Randburg, South Africa. July 9, 2009. Eliakim N. Akhusama successfully defended his MSc thesis at the University of Nairobi in April 2012, and will be awarded his degree shortly. In the mean time, he is working on the concept proposal for his PhD. He should get provisional admission into the PhD program within one month. John Mwero, also of the University of Nairobi, earlier submitted a draft of his PhD thesis. Odilon Ilunga submitted a draft of his MSc dissertation, which was returned to him in Namibia in early April, where he met with Profs. Cornish and Kavishe, his supervisors. Profs. Cornish and Kavishe, together with Mr Silas Hango (PhD student) visited Otjihase Mine, near Windhoek, Namibia to obtain information for his PhD project. This is a new project, and it is also co-supervised by Dr L. Chown (Wits). Mr. Odera (PhD student) has a draft paper on for the successful etching of the platinum-based alloys. The technique has helped resolved the microstructures of these alloys. Mr. Liberty Chipise is in the final stages of completing his MPhil dissertation.
March 2012: • The AMSEN Workshop will be held in Nairobi, Kenya from 21st – 23rd March. All students have either submitted papers, or are finishing their papers, which will be compiled into a Proceedings. The Node co-ordinators will also submitted reports on activities in their Nodes. Student workshops will be held and students will also be presenting their papers. (Invited speaker Wole Soboyejo's presentation here.) • Mr Silas Hango (PhD UNAM student at Wits), and a new student for 2012, has contacted a mine in Namibia that he will visit and this will give a real application for his work. • Mr Oluwaseun Dada, a new student, was the first to finalise his abstract for the AMSEN students at Wits. This is an excellent start! • Prof Cornish’s presentations at the Women in Engineering Symposium, “Leadership, Innovation and Sustainability” held at Sandton Johannesburg, South Africa on 27-28 February, 2012 were so successful that she has been asked to repeat them in May 2012.
February 2012: • Prof. Rading has been invited to the Association of International Education Administrators (AIEA) Conference in Washington DC where he will take part in a panel presentation. He will present the highlights of his experiences with the University of Nairobi within AMSEN-RISE, the achievements, challenges and the way forward. • Mr Silas Hango (PhD UNAM student at Wits), Mr Oluwaseun Dada (MSc FUTA student at Wits) & Ms Naomi Shifeta (MSc UNAM) started their postgraduate degrees this year. • Mr Isaac Popoola attended the Condensed Matter and Materials Physics Conference in December in the United Kingdom • Mr Bernard Odera has just returned from the 26th International Seminar on Multicomponent Heterogeneous Equilibria: Workshop instigated by Materials Science International Services GmbH, Stuttgart and the Max-Planck-Institut für Metallforschung, Stuttgart, for the critical evaluation of ternary phase diagram data and related data. 5th-11th February 2012, Schloss Ringberg, Tegernsee, Germany. • He also visited Bayreuth University, where both he and Prof Cornish gave presentations. • Prof Cornish has been invited to give a keynote presentation at the Women in Engineering Symposium, “Leadership, Innovation and Sustainability” to be held at Sandton Johannesburg, South Africa on 27-28 February, 2012. • Stephan Coetzee, together with his supervisors, has submitted a paper to Microscopy & Microanalysis 2012, Phoenix, Arizona, USA, 29th July – 2nd August 2012. December 2011: Adenike Olaseinde presented at the International Corrosion Conference at Perth, Australia, 20th – 24th November 2011, and her paper is on the cd. Josias van der Merwe and I also presented other work. It was a wonderful conference, and we all learned much. AMSEN students presented at three conferences in December: Microscopy Society of Southern Africa Conference, Pretoria, South Africa, 5th – 9th December 2011: Adenike Olaseinde, Stephan Coetzee, Liberty Chipise and Ayodeja Apata. I gave Bernard Odera’s presentation for him, because he was booked off sick. Their work is all in the proceedings. Africa Materials Science Society Conference, Victoria Falls, 11th – 16th December 2011: Liberty Chipise and Ayodeja Apata presented, and their papers have been submitted to the Materials Research Society for potential publication. I also gave two presentations for previous non-AMSEN students, and submitted those papers, and gave a lecture on binary phase diagrams at the associated School for undergraduate students. We went to see the Falls and also went on a cruise on the Zambezi River, where we saw hippos and lots of birds! Institute of Physics Conference, Manchester, UK, 13th – 15th December 2011: Isaac Popoola should have presented by now. Looks like we will have a FUTA student at Wits, starting next year… and we have a new AMSEN supervisor at Wits Prof Claudia Polese in Mechanical, Industrial and Aeronautical Engineering who will be the major supervisor. November 2011: Mr Kenneth Njoroge is about to/or just has submit a paper to the journal of “Modelling and Simulation in Materials Science and Engineering”. Mr O.J. Dada from FUTA has been accepted at Wits for his PhD, and will be a FUTA student studying at Wits, co-supervised by both Wits and FUTA staff. Mr Odilon Ilunga (UNAM) went to the National Metrology Institute of South Africa (NMISA) , Pretoria on the 7th and 8th November with Professor Lesley Cornish and Mr Ayodeji Apata (Wits), and much work was done in the scanning electron microscope on his samples, with Mr Ayodeji Apata as the operator. This is a major breakthrough, and the results of the interactions between the copper and the steel looked interesting. Professor Lesley Cornish won a Research Award from the Corrosion Institute of South Africa, CorrISA, for running around and applying for a Corrosion Chair. The chair is not for her, but it would be good if it works out. We sent Mrs Adenike Olaseinde (Wits) on a CorrISA corrosion course at the end of October. Messrs Muiva (UB), Coetzee (UB), Chipese, Apata, Odera and Mrs Olaseinde have had their MSSA abstracts accepted, and will be presenting at that conference in December. They should all be working hard on their presentations. Mr Liberty Chipese (UB) and Mr Ayodeji Apata have both had abstracts accepted for the Africa Materials Research Society Conference at Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe in December. Mr Isaac Popoola will be presenting at the Institute of Physics Conference in the UK in December. October 2011: Prof. Lesley Cornish was a finalist for the 2010/2011 National Science and Technology Forum “Eskom Research Capacity Developer over the last 5 to 10 years” award. Prof. Lesley Cornish was part of the team that was a R&D Magazine 2011, R&D 100 Winners, for Novel platinum/chromium alloy for the manufacture of improved coronary stents (Life Sciences); Primary developer: National Energy Technology Laboratory, USA; by Boston Scientific Corporation Inc. and Carpenter Specialty Alloys, Minitubes ZAC Technisud, Accellent Inc., for work done whilst at Mintek.
Prof. Lesley Cornish won the Corrosion Institute of Southern Africa Research Award 2011, for the University of the Witwatersrand to advance corrosion research and capacity building in South Africa, together with Dr Abe Mngomezulu, CEO, Mintek, for collaboration for the application to the SARChI for a Chair in corrosion. Two students, Bernard Odera (Wits) and Adenike Olaseinde (Wits), are preparing to present their work at the AMI student day of the ZrTa conference in October 2011. Prof Lesley Cornish has just returned from a three-day visit to the University of Botswana where she has been working with two students that she is co-supervising, Stephan Coetzee and Liberty Chipese under AMSEN. It is hoped that Liberty Chipese will submit his MPhil soon, and a journal paper from Stephan Coetzee’s MPhil work is being finalised. Late August 2011: FUTA has finally taken delivery of its microscope, which is now installed and commissioned for use by the students. FUTA expressed much gratitude for this, and it will help the students enormously. The feedback from the students who attended the two UB AMSEN workshops on SEM-EDX and hardness was very good. Mr. Oladele (FUTA PhD student) is hoping to come to Pretoria and Johannesburg, South Africa for further work on his research studies until 9th September 2011. It is planned that he will present a seminar at Wits on 1st September 2011 about his activities while in South Africa, assuming that he gets his visa in time! (Update: seminar agenda here) Another abstract was sent off to the Microscopy Society of Southern Africa Conference, to be held in Pretoria in December, so this means there should be at least 6 AMSEN student presenting. Next month will see the first PASMAT, Pan African School for Materials” in Abuja, and at least 6 AMSEN students will attend this. August 2011: At the University of Botswana, two more workshops are about to be held: Hardness from 28th-29th July and SEM – EDX training from 1st – 5th August 2011. These will be attended by students from AMSEN. At Wits: Mr A. Apata submitted two abstracts to the Africa Materials Research Society Conference, to be held in Zimbabwe in December 2011. Mrs A.O. Olaseinde and Mr B. Odera have sent full papers to the ZrTa 2011 conference to be held in the Gauteng region, October 2011. This conference is part of South Africa’s Advanced Metals Initiative. Mr. L Nyemba graduated with his MSc on 21st July. He is currently aiding Mr Ilunga who has taken over the research project, but will soon move to Vaal to work on the commercialisation of his work. Mr K. Njoroge has undertaken a major part of writing up his work at the University of Nairobi. May 2011: Lesley Cornish was a delegate for the Africa Mission Study given by ASAE in Washington, DC. There she met other people running associations in Africa and learned much about how to do this better. Adenike Olasiende had her abstract accepted for the Australian conference. Lesley Cornish will also present at this conference. Bernard Odera has submitted an abstract to ZrTa2011, the annual conference of the African Metals Initiative, which will take place in Johannesburg in October 2011. Lloyd Nyemba now has a post at North-West University (the Potchefstroom Campus) to help commercialize the findings from his master's. March 2011: News from FUTA: Please find listed below the the paper published/submitted for publication. 1.Oladele I.O., Omotoyinbo J.A.and Adewara J.O.T (2010), Investigating the effect of chemical treatment on the constituents and tensile properties of sisal fibre. Journal of Minerals and Materials Characterization. Vol.9, No.6, pp.569-582. 2.Aramide,F.O.,Folorunso,D.O.,Olubambi,P.A.and Borode,J.O.(2010), Impurity removal ability of oxalic acid from clay based materials. (submitted to Materials Research) February 2011: Isaac Popoola was due to attend the Nanoscience Conference 2011 in Egypt in February. Unfortunately due to the political unrest, this conference was postponed. Isaac will be waiting for the conference to be rescheduled. · Alain Mufula has filled the vacancy left by Lloyd Nyemba, who submitted his MSc dissertation in December. Alain will be continuing the research on the carbon nanotubes /polymer membrane composites for fuel cell application started by Lloyd. Alain is a UNam student, registered at Wits. · Liberty Chipise from UB is visiting Prof Lesley Cornish for a week, and is working on the interpretation of his results. He will also be collecting samples for Stephan Coetzee, another UB student being so-supervised at Wits. · Adenike Olaseinde has sent off her abstract for the 18th International Corrosion Congress, in Perth, Australia, 20th – 24th November. She is using some of her TATA Fellowship, Womane in Science prize to fund this. · Bernard Odera is on tenterhooks waiting for the South African government to sort out his study permit (he applied in October last year) so that he can finalise his visa application to Germany. He should be attending the 25th Annual MSIT Meeting, International Seminar on Heterogeneous Multicomponent Equilibria. He will be attending this with Prof Cornish, both using external AMSEN funds. January 2011: Lloyd Nyemba submitted his MSc dissertation for examination in December 2010. Isaac Popoola submitted his MSc dissertation to be banked. He has applied to the Faculty of Science at the University of Witwatersrand to convert his MSc to a PhD. Isaac Popoola will be attending the Nanoscience Conference 2011 to be held in Egypt during February. December 2010: At the University of Botswana, Stephan Coetzee and Liberty Chipise are well into analysing their second batch of samples. Students from FUTA have returned home after their 6 week sojourn at the Tshwane University of Technology and Wits. Unfortunately, they did not give presentations at Wits, but will do so on a return visit. November 2010: Adenike Olaseinde attended a metal Dusting Serminar given by Dr J. Zhang who was presenting at Mintek, Randburg. Isaac Popoola is having his draft MSc looked at. At UB, they have broken part of the equipment in their SEM, but have managed to get their XRD up and running, and will soon be learning how to use it. Other than that, we are all working towards the next reports, and people are starting to go on their holidays! Late October 2010: Graham Bathgate and his co-authors have had a journal publication accepted:
Title: "Continuous Synthesis of Multi-Walled Carbon Nanotubes from Xylene Using the Swirled Floating Catalyst Chemical Vapour Deposition Technique" Jane Morris (from SABINA) is going to be a co-supervisor for I.O. Oladele at FUTA, so that there is some botanical input there. So there is a a cross-RISE Network collaboration! FUTA have been severely leant on to take on more external supervisors....and we are hoping to get a Wits staff member involved there. The FUTA students are still around in South Africa. Some of the AMSEN students are off to the Microscopy Conference next week. Bernard’s name is on a paper being presented at another conference next week as well. So the publications are starting! We have some interesting results from both A. Apata and B. Odera, and now understand more of those systems. We have run two lots of samples for the AMSEN UB students here at Wits.... XRD and DSC. October 2010: After being awarded the TATA Women in Science Fellowship on 13th August, Adenike Olaseinde has had a baby girl, born on 14th September. However, she came to the RISE conference in October! All of the AMSEN students that submitted abstracts to the Microscopy Society of Southern Africa Conference, to be held later in October in Bela Bela, South Africa, have had their abstracts accepted, and so they will be presenting. These are: Ayodeja Apata, Bernard Odera and Adenike Olaseinde from Wits, with Stephan Coetzee and Liberty Chipese from the University of Botswana. Last year, there were three AMSEN abstract at this conference, and this year, there are now five. Kenneth Njoroge (University of Nairobi) will be staying at Wits after the RISE conference to undertake some practical transmission electron microscopy work there. Mintek has kindly provided some of the samples for him. Four FUTA students will be staying on after the RISE Conference in Pretoria to undertake practical work at Tswhane University of Technology, where Dr Peter Olubambi is currently working. The optical microscope will be soon be arriving at FUTA! The University of Botswana has received its copies of the Ternary Diagram Handbooks. This is an important resource for both AMSEN and other students. At the University of Namibia, the mechanical testing equipment, mainly funded by the University itself, will soon be arriving. August 2010: Adenike Olaseinde, our only female student in AMSEN, is a finalist for a Woman in Science Award and will be attending the Gala Dinner on the 13th August 2010 where the awards will be made. She is in the Fellowships for Women Scientist category. Selected AMSEN students from Wits and the University of Botswana attended an X-ray course from 26th – 30th July 2010, which was presented by Dr Dave Billing from the School of Chemistry, Wits to Chemistry and Physics postgraduate students. It is planned to give this course in FUTA, Nigeria, in the near future as part of the AMSEN package. At least 5 abstracts from AMSEN have been sent to the Microscopy Society of Southern Africa conference in October, a paper was submitted to the Light Metals Conference Student Day (October), and a paper on AMSEN was sent to the 14th Annual International Education Association of South Africa Conference, University of the Witwatersrand. July 2010: Last year, three AMSEN students presented at the 47th Annual Conference of the Microscopy Society of South Africa, from Wits and UB. This year, we have five AMSEN students who have submitted abstracts for the 48th Annual Conference of the Microscopy Society of South Africa, again from Wits and UB. The conference will be at Warmbaths, South Africa. Once again, the students made the deadline! Most of the research work is going well, and some interesting results are being found. Profs. Cornish, Kavishe and Jain are about to submit a paper to the 14th Annual International Education Association of South Africa Conference University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 28th August – 1st September 2010 on AMSEN. Prof Cornish will present her Inaugural Lecture on the 13th July, and the title is “Developing Novel Alloys Using Phase Diagrams.” April 2010: The University of Botswana node of the African Materials Science and Engineering Network (AMSEN), a Carnegie-IAS RISE network, hosted two consecutive research training Workshops for staff and graduate students from member universities including UB. The Workshops were organized in pursuance of the AMSEN objective of training, human resource development and capacity building in materials science and engineering in the member universities. The first Workshop on Materials Research, Phase Diagrams and SEM/ EDX from 13 to 16 April 2010 dealt with the theoretical aspects of the phase diagram research and the use of SEM and EDX. The workshop was attended by 10 delegates from the Universities of Botswana, Namibia, Nairobi, Wits, and the Federal University of Technology, Akure, Nigeria that included academics as well as MPhil/ PhD students. On the first day of the Workshop, delegates presented their research work. The remaining days were devoted to tutorials and lectures in phase diagrams of binary and ternary alloy systems and the use of SEM/ EDX as tools of research. The lectures and tutorials were presented by Prof. P K Jain (UB), Prof. L A Cornish (Wits) and Mr. S. H. Coetzee (UB).
The second Workshop on SEM and EDX Demonstration and Practice from 19 – 23 April, 2010 was facilitated by Mr. S. H. Coetzee. This involved operation, use and application of SEM and EDX techniques in materials research. Participation was restricted to 8 trainees because of the space limitation in the EM laboratory. Electron microscopy is an indispensible tool in materials research to study the microstructure and microanalysis of samples by almost all materials researchers. The Workshops were self supporting. The cost was covered from the delegate’s registration fees. The registration of the UB participants was sponsored by AMSEN-UB.
Prof Jain, AMSEN Node coordinator for University of Botswana, will be presenting his inaugural lecture on March 31. All the AMSEN students are busily finishing off their extended abstracts for the proceedings of the 1st AMSEN Workshop held in Namibia in January 2010. February 2010: Nearly all AMSEN members met in Windhoek at the end of January. It was opened by dignitaries from the University of Namibia and also His Excellency the High Commisioner of Nigeria. All the node presenters made a presentation, and I also did an overview. Then all the students gave presentations, and at the end we gave 3 prizes for the best presentations. Most of the talks were of a high standard and it was good to hear from the other nodes about what they were doing. We also had a node co-ordinators meeting, and it came out that we needed more networking - not just using Wits as a central node. But that is also up to the other people! There are students who do not have a Wits supervisors. We all felt the Wokshop was a success, and would like to plan for another. Prof. Cornish is in Uppsala to meet with the people from ISP there, who are supported by SIDA. Next week, Bernard Odera and another student advised by Prof. Cornish (non-AMSEN but from Ghana) will be going to the University of Botswana for a week to learn and do some scanning electron microscopy. January 2010: Three AMSEN students presented at the Microscopy Society of Southern Africa Conference in Durban, South Africa, 8th – 11th December 2009: • B.O. Odera (Wits), “A Study of Phases in Selected Alloys from the Pt-Al-V System in the Pt-rich Corner”, Four students presented at the 5th African Materials Research Society, Abuja, Nigeria, 14 - 18 December, 2009: • O. Olaniran (FUTA), “Development of nano-structured parts by spin –casting method”, After the conference, Profs Cornish and Kavishe visited FUTA for a short visit. Despite the lack of power, the students gave a short introduction on their work, and Profs Cornish and Kavishe spoke about the aims and running of AMSEN, and also visited the Vice-Chancellor of FUTA, where they were very cordially received, and discussions took place on the sustainability of AMSEN. On the second day, the Engineering Materials Development Institute at Akure was visited. This is where the FUTA students undertake much of their experimental work, and it is very well equipped, and has a back-up electricity supply. December 2009: AMSEN students go back in time
The AMSEN students were invited to the combined DST/NRF Centre of Excellence combined End-of-Year-Function and Team Building events. This was held at Cooper’s Cave, which in the Cradle on Mankind near Johannesburg. We drove out in a bus, walked about 1.5 k to the site, had a muffin instead of breakfast, and then went on the site tour. The caves are interesting because they are in dolomite and have collected debris, including hominid and animal bones. Some of the caves are now exposed, so they are easy to excavate, except the debris has formed really hard breccia.
After the tour, we then had our first competition. We were put in teams, and each team was given a replica of an artefact and we had to say what we knew. As it was not much, we made it up, and the stories were very entertaining, if wildly inaccurate! After a picnic lunch, under the lovely wild olive tree, we had our second event, making stone tools. This was much more difficult than anyone anticipated, and the culmination was using the tools to cut bone. We were not very good at this, except for one person, who dropped the biggest rock he could find on the bones!
November 2009:
At the School of Chemical and Metallurgical Engineering Poster Day held on the 5th November 2009, AMSEN student Ayodeja Apata won the prize for the second best Postgraduate Poster. All the other AMSEN students participated and all their posters were also of a high standard. Here he is with his poster and his prize.
Lloyd Nyemba, Ayodeja Apata , Adenike Olasiende, Bernard Odera and Graham Bathgate also had good posters and (except for Graham), they are shown here. The event is held every year, and is a show case for the School.
October 2009: UNIVERSITY OF BOTSWANA AMSEN NODE LAUNCHED (see article here)
Prof Cornish also interviewed Rodney Genga who is applying to Wits for postgraduate studies, although not currently within AMSEN. Eliakim Niva Akhusama is a new AMSEN student who will start his studies, initially by coursework, on 12th October 2009. His research will start later and will be a study of the heat affected zone in aluminium alloys. He is shown here with his two supervisors, Prof George Rading (U. Nairobi) and Prof. Frank Kavishe (U. Namibia).
John Mwero has been working on his project since 1st April 2009. His project concerns the addition of ash from sugar cane to concrete. The rationale is that if the cost of cement can be lowered, then so can the construction cost, and this work is targeted at housing. He has derived the chemical compositions of the concrete with the ash, and will soon be testing the mechanical properties. He will present his work at the Institution of Engineers of Kenya Conference in 2010. His supervisors are Dr. S.O. Abuodha, Prof. G.O. Rading, Dr S. Muenya and Prof. F. Kavishe. John is shown here between Prof. G.O. Rading and Prof. F. Kavishe.
Meanwhile, at least four AMSEN abstracts have been accepted for the African Materials Research Society in Abuja, Nigeria. The deadline for the full papers is very soon, so we are all trying to finish the work!
September 2009:
Through Wits, there has been e-mail contact with Prof. Chris Chama at the University of Zambia, who is keen to join the AMSEN scheme and send some students to Wits to undertake the research part of their degrees. We are now looking at some alternative sources of funding which will allow this. Chris Chama and Lesley Cornish met in 2003 at the African MRS Meeting in Johannesburg.
August 2009:
The following is the progression made by AMSEN students at University of Nairobi Node:
Other news is that now 3 students (2 at Wits and 1 at U Botswana) have sent off their proposals to the Microscopy Society of Southern Africa Conference (in December in Durban, SA) and one has gone off to the African Materials Research Society conference in Abuja, Nigeria also in December.
Dr. Cornish is attending the Regional and Interregional Cooperation to Strengthen Basic Sciences in Developing Countries conference in Addis at the beginning of September and making a presentation regarding AMSEN. Dr. Kavishe attending too. The AMSEN workshop is now in January, still in Namibia.
July 2009: Elizabeth Shigwedha, the Administrative Assistant from the U. Namibia Secretariat, is currently spending a week at the DST/NRF Centre of Excellence on Strong Materials (CoE-SM) at Wits, where she is being trained on her Secretariat duties, mainly by the CoE-SM Secretariat: Tanya (CoE-SM Administrative Manager), Moira (CoE-SM Secretary) and Marina (CoE-SM Book-keeper). She is being given advice and guidance on a number of issues, such as running the AMSEN Workshop. Unfortunately, the latter has been moved until next year – we did not realise that the African MRS (Materials Research Society) conference was this year, and there was a problem with the hotel.
June 2009:
May 2009: Most of the students have submitted drafts of their research proposals, and these will soon be submitted to the Faculty. The first reports to be written by the students are due at the end of May, and already at least two have been submitted. Most of the students have already given a presentation of their proposed projects. Two students has already started their experimental work, on the characterization of the samples. Some of the students have been attending extra courses, for example, on writing at the University of the Witwatersrand. A thermodynamics and phase diagram course will be held at the University of the Witwatersrand from 1st – 5th June. April 2009: Three of the four Wits students have started their projects and are currently working on their project proposals. Similarly, three of the UNAM students who are registered at Wits while UNAM builds their programme are also at Wits. There is still difficulty with the remaining three students at Botswana, but one is safely identified and has already started on his project, although his registration is not yet completed. The status is unchanged for the U Nairobi and FUTA students. A provisional date has been identified for the first AMSEN workshop: 2-4 September 2009 in Namibia. All students and supervisors are expected to attend, and the students will present their work to date. There will also be presentations from each node coordinator. The workshop is designed so that the students can meet each other and that the academics and managers can also meet to increase understanding and efficiency of running the program. March 2009: Three students have already started at the University of Witwatersrand and they are working on their literature surveys. The first experimental samples are being planned. Four students have been identified at the University of Namibia; two of these have been working in industry and want to return to the university. Two students are working on nanotechnology. There are plans for visits of copper smelters in South Africa, Zambia and the Democratic Republic of Congo, probably in June. Two students, who are members of staff, have already started at the University of Nairobi, and a third student will start later. One staff member at the University of Nairobi is undertaking his PhD at Wits. The Federal University of Technology, Akure in Nigeria has identified four students, together with their projects and supervisors. Stephan Coetzee is a member of the staff at University of Botswana who will soon be undertaking his PhD under AMSEN. He will also head the electron microscopy team. |
This is from Graham Bathgate’s report on his work for his MSc Eng topic: "Continuous production of single-walled carbon nanotubes by means of a swirled-fluid chemical vapour deposition reactor." To date, he has collected and read numerous journal articles and publications for his topic, and has begun his experiments. Currently, he is still in the first stages of experimentation whereby, by batch experimentation, he hopes to find the optimum conditions to produce single-walled nanotubes, before attempting to make the process continuous.
A visit to Zambia was made by Odilon Ilunga and Profs Cornish and Kavishe to a copper mine, and they looked at the all the processes from bringing up the ores to refining. This is necessary for the basis of Odilon's project.
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