Watch: Dr Bernard Fanaroff, Lifetime Achievement NRF Awards

Dr Bernard Fanaroff (Special Adviser and Former Director, Square Kilometre Array South Africa) received the Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2018 NRF Awards.

As Director of the SKA SA Project, Dr Fanaroff led the conceptualisation, development and construction of the South African SKA precursor, the 64 dish MeerKAT telescope array, which was completed in March 2018 on schedule, on budget and within the prescripts of the PFMA. This project included the construction of the prototype telescopes XDM and KAT 7 and the infrastructure to establish to huge observatory site at Losberg in the Karoo. A key part of the project has been the development of the SKA South Africa’s highly-respected Human Capital Development programme.

Despite his retirement at the end of 2015, Dr Fanaroff has continued to work as an advisor to the SKA SA project, as well as an advisor to the Ministry of Science and Technology. He has been appointed co-chair of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) Working Group on Information and Communication Technologies and High Performance Computing, and as member of the Advisory Committee of the Breakthrough Listen project. He is also a founding member of the Academy of Science of South Africa (ASSAf); a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society; and was a Visiting Professor at Oxford University.