Innocentia Setlhabi.
A.D.A.P.T.T forms part of the University Staff Doctoral Programme (USDP). Also part of DHET’s University Capacity Development Programme, it aims to produce a stronger and high-quality pipeline of PhD graduates among academic and professional staff at local universities. This will help to build supervisory capacity at South African Universities and promote collaboration between South African and international universities.
Each three-year long programme will have a set number of doctoral students who will be supervised and mentored with overseas exchanges. The focused disciplines for doctoral partnerships include ICT, Engineering, climate change mitigation, global health, mountain research and community engagement.
About 114 South African doctoral students, comprising 80% black and 50% women staff members of 45 years or younger will be recruited for the programme. Dr Rita Raseleka, Director of Research, Innovation and Engagement explained that the two staff members selected from TUT would spend sufficient time at their partner university in the United States to ensure: “… maximum benefit will be derived from the experience abroad. Students should also benefit from teaching development and research development opportunities during this period.”
“I will be stationed at the University of Missouri, Saint Louis. I look forward to the opportunity to consult, discuss and attend professional seminars with my mentor Prof CAI, focussing mainly on my doctoral project entitled: Big Data Analytics to improve decision making for Outcome based funding of public universities in South Africa. I expect to be equipped with more knowledge on how Big Data analytics have been adopted and used in international contexts, mainly in US universities,” Anna Segooa said.
Innocentia Setlhabi, whose PHD research focuses on the Development of Nickel Titanium based Shape Memory Alloy for High Temperature Applications, is geared up and ready for this journey. “I am very appreciative of this opportunity and the support from DHED and TUT. Such an international partnership is critical to my research, as it will give me the opportunity to share academic and scientific accomplishments with overseas universities. Since engineering is an international and global application, it is fundamental to think more broadly and gain depth of perspective in my research from such collaborations,” she said.