DRD aims to improve lives through quintuple helix partnerships

No single event captures the incredible breadth of intramural and extramural research as effectively as the annual CPUT Research Festival 2024.

The jam-packed event stretched over four days, The first day of the 2024 Institutional Research Festival kicked off with a welcome address by Vice-Chancellor Prof Chris Nhlapo in which he encouraged the continued support for the focus areas:

• The environment, climate change and sustainability
• Bioeconomy and biotechnology
• Space Science, Engineering and Technology
• Smart energy
• Human, Health and Social dynamics
• Digital society

Day one of the festival also focused on integrating work-focused research and the world of business and served as a platform to showcase and celebrate research achievements across various disciplines. The keynote speech was provided by Dr Sharman Wickham from the Cape Higher Education Consortium (CHEC). Dr Abeda Dawood Division Manager of Research Capacity Development (RCD) at the South African Medical Research Council made a presentation on RCD grants, such as self-initiated research grants, scholarships, and other research capacity development programmes at SAMRC.

Prof Dina Burger: Director: Directorate Research Development, said: “This is also the first time in South Africa that a Research Festival of this magnitude has taken place and as CPUT we should be proud that we have pioneered such an important opportunity to come together and celebrate the dedicated hard work of so many research work that has taken place with the singular aim to improve the lives of our communities through quintuple helix partnerships.”

In what used to be a Research Day, Burger said their scope of research has grown in leaps and bounds to such an extent that “it is actually impossible to just focus on our research achievements in one day”. “This is where we developed the concept of a research festival where we can place a magnifying glass on the full scope of our research endeavours inclusive of research integrity and ethics of our research and our postgraduate achievements.”

She said through their CHEC partnership they are doing highly impactful research that is taken up by society for the benefit of society. “There are also a number of evidence-based research projects undertaken as a result of the support given by CHEC. The possibility to also celebrate the extent to which we undertake mode 2 and 3 research with quintuple helix partners aligns well with our Vision 2030 especially when there is a growing body of evidence of transdisciplinary research taking place across the institution.”

Burger said the first Research Festival has also allowed multiple internal and external stakeholders and CHEC partners to exhibit the research that they do collaboratively and has offered an opportunity for academic researchers, captains of industry, sister university academic researchers, and higher education leaders as well as local and provincial government leaders to come together for one week to further explore opportunities and deepen the commitment to undertake collaborative research and innovation impacting the society.

“I am of the opinion that we have achieved our goal... What is most important for me is that an important ecosystem has joined hands and has come together to find mutual opportunities to undertake more research and generate more innovations for the betterment of society and solving the challenges that we are confronted with.”

The last day of the conference included several individual paper presentations with themed colloquia centred around Research Focus Area 1: Bioeconomy and Biotechnology and Research Focus Area 3: Smart Energy.

The day also included a reflection session and certificate ceremony for participants of the Sisonke Supervision Mentoring Programme.

The day’s highlights included the awarding of certificates and awards to National Research Foundation-rated researchers as well as for research excellence.

Burger said: “We feel proud of this achievement, but we also do not wish to take credit for the success of the festival by ourselves, as credit should go to the staff, we worked tirelessly to make the festival possible, our CHEC partners, our academic staff, our phenomenal postgraduate students and our industry and broader community stakeholders. We also need to reflect more on how to improve the scale and reach of the next Research Festival and the mode of delivery.”

She added: “We ultimately think that this festival has the potential to include our myriads of African partners as well as our growing network of international partners.”