SARAO Junior engineer wins Best Poster Presentation at UCT Engineering Research Expo

Zwivhuya Ramudzuli, a Junior Engineer in die Digital Backend team at SARAO, won the prize for the Best Poster Presentation at the University of Cape Town’s (UCT) Engineering and the Built Environment Faculty’s (EBE) 2018 Research Expo.

Ramudzuli (26) explains the focus of the poster, titled Investigation into a GPS time pulse radiator for testing time-stamp accuracy of a radio telescope: “In order to accurately map the skies and obtain a better understanding, the MeerKAT telescope demands exceptionally precise time and frequency standards. In order to verify how well each radio telescopes’ antenna is synchronised to the universal coordinated time (UTC), a portable GPS time pulse radiator (GTR) was proposed. The device will be used as a verification tool for testing time-stamp accuracy and beamformer delays”.

A second year Masters degree student at the University of Cape Town, Ramudzuli’s research focuses on Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) time transfer.

He joined SARAO in 2016 as a Young Professional Development programme recruit, working on embedded software development and hardware prototyping.

“Within embedded software development, I am responsible for developing network based applications targeted for the linux environment. These applications allow scientists and engineers to monitor vitals of the digitiser devices that capture large volumes of data generated by the radio telescope. While working in multidisciplinary teams, I have been exposed to cutting-edge technology, through which I developed technical skills in technical solution development for radio astronomy,” says Ramudzuli.

Each participant at the UCT EBE 2018 Research Expo received a certificate of participation and the winners received a cash prize.

Congratulations!

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