eNews
#01 2025
NRF-SAEON in the media
By Staff Writer
The sterling work of SAEON scientists was celebrated in an article titled Congress 59: The Award Winners in the December 2024 edition of Grassroots, the newsletter of the Grassland Society of Southern Africa (GSSA). The following SAEON/EFTEON scientists and associates won awards at the GSSA Congress:
- Best Paper Published in the African Journal of Range and Forage Science: Gina Arena, Tim Hoffmann, Helga van der Merwe, Tim O’Connor
- Best presentation by a Young Scientist: Lindokuhle Dlamini, EFTEON
- Best poster: Helga Knoetze, EFTEON
- Prestige Award: William Bond, SAEON’s former Chief Scientist
Egagasini Node
An article titled OceanX and OceanQuest Unveil Historic Deep-Sea Discoveries in Cape Town was published in Business Tech Africa, Lifestyle & Tech, Darkie Magazine and Cape Town Guy of 26 February and RegTech Africa and ReFramed of 27 February 2025. Articles titled Scientists arrive in Cape Town after deep-sea discoveries around Africa, Deep-sea research around Africa’s coast may aid fishing stock recovery, Unlocking the Future of Livestock Farming at Africa Agri-Tech 2025 covering the same topic, was published in Daily Maverick of 27 February and Engineering News, AgriFocus Africa and SME Tech Guru of 3 March respectively.
The articles highlight the extraordinary findings of the “Around Africa Expedition” on board the state-of-the-art research vessel, OceanXplorer. Dr Lara Atkinson, a benthic ecologist at SAEON’s Egagasini Node, is cited in the articles. Lara was joined by Jordan Van Stavel, a research coordinator at the Egagasini Node.
uLwazi Node
An article titled Zindi wants AI for the people, was published in Business Day, Companies & Markets and Business Live on 19 February 2025. Zindi, the data science competition platform established in South Africa, has partnered with SAEON and Google DeepMind to tackle one of South Africa’s most pressing environmental challenges – urban flooding. The partnership aims to utilise the capability of artificial intelligence (AI) techniques to enhance resilience towards sustainable development.
Open Data Day is an annual commemoration of open data all over the world coordinated by the Open Knowledge Foundation which works across 40 countries. In celebration of International Open Data Day on 5 March 2025, the National Science and Technology Forum (NSTF) issued a media release “recognising the outstanding contributions of uLwazi Node of SAEON’s Open Data Platform (ODP)”. The uLwazi Node team won the 2024 NSTF-South32 Data for Research Award.
SAEON eNews is the bimonthly online newsletter of the South African Environmental Observation Network.
SAEON is a research platform funded by the Department of Science and Innovation (DSI) and managed by the National Research Foundation (NRF).
SAEON serves as a national platform for detecting, translating and predicting environmental change through scientifically designed observation systems and research.