Dr Mxolisi Brendon Shongwe, Head of Chemical, Metallurgical and Materials Engineering and Senior Lecturer at the Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment.
SciVal, a web-based analytics solution that provides comprehensive access to the research performance of over 20 100 research institutions and their associated researchers from 231 nations worldwide, made the listing. According to SciVal, Dr Shongwe produced 104 scholarly outputs during the assessment period.
Dr Shongwe holds a Bachelor of Science Hons (best final year student), a Masters degree and a PhD in Metallurgical Engineering, all from the University of the Witwatersrand. He also holds an Advanced Diploma in Vocational Teacher Education from the Haaga-Helia University of Applied Sciences, Finland. Currently he is doing a Master’s in Education Management at the Haaga-Helia University of Applied Sciences, Finland.
His research interests are multi-disciplinary, including the development of materials for advanced applications, metallurgical processes, and an understanding of optimisation and simulation of mineral processing plants. His other core research interest is in the management of academic programmes. He has supervised 18 Masters and 7 PhD students to completion. He has published 4 book chapters and more than 130 refereed papers. He has been a reviewer of at least 15 ISI journals in Elsevier, Springer as well as Taylor and Francis.
He is a recipient of more than R4 000 000 in NRF and international accumulated research grants for the period 2016 to 2020. He has received awards such as the Outstanding Young Presenter (2016) in Advanced Materials, and more recently the Youngest Institutional Researcher of the Year (2018) as well as Youngest Faculty Researcher of the Year (2017 and 2018), to name a few.
Dr Shongwe says, “This achievement was made possible through the support of my mentors, mentees, the enabling TUT environment for young, upcoming researchers, and more importantly, my family’s support.”