SARAO News

The SKA and HartRAO participated in Career Awareness Day, which took place in Mamelodi West in Pretoria on 27 May 2017.

The event was organised by and held at the Evangelical Lutheran Church of South Africa.

The Career Awareness Day is an annual event, which is led by the Young Adults League of the church, and it has been running since 2008. The purpose of the event was to give career guidance to members of the youth in and around Mamelodi.

Thobela Baxana, a Test Engineer in the Digital Backend Unit at SKA SA in Cape Town; and Tony Dhlamini, a Science Communicator at HartRAO presented to the audience.

There were a number of other organisations participating in the event, and each organisation was given 10 minutes to speak about their organisation and careers in its respective industries. Baxana provided basic information on SKA and HartRAO, and information on careers and career opportunities in these two organisations.

The audience consisted of Grade 8 to 12 learners, first year students, members of the community and church members from Mamelodi and surrounding areas. The learners were very interested in careers in astronomy. Some learners showed interested in other fields of science and technology as well.

The National Science and Technology Forum (NSTF) and SKA SA will celebrate Youth Month by hosting South Africa’s 2016 Top 20 matriculants in mathematics and physical science on a national astronomy tour from 23-28 June 2017.

The students, now all first year students in science, technology and innovation-related fields, are selected by the NSTF to participate in the organisation’s Brilliants Programme. Each student was the 2016 top-performing female or male matriculant in their province, based on their marks in mathematics and physical science in the most recent National Senior Certificate (Grade 12) Examinations.

The NSTF Brilliants will visit various astronomy sites, including the SKA site outside Carnarvon; South African Large Telescope (SALT) outside Sutherland; South African Astronomical Observatory (SAAO) in Observatory; Iziko Planetarium in Cape Town and the Hartebeesthoek Radio Astronomy Observatory (HartRAO) outside Johannesburg. The students will also be trained to assist during stargazing outreach events in the Karoo, participate in an introduction to big data workshop by Google, and visit various scientific tourism sites en route to and in Cape Town.

NSTF and SKA SA hope that the tour will motivate the students to continue their studies in mathematics and science; introduce the students to emerging fields of study and careers in mathematics and science, bursary opportunities at SKA SA, and role models in mathematics and science in South Africa; give the students an appreciation of the geographic advantages South Africa has for astronomy that led to world-class astronomy instruments being placed in the country; and inspire the students to promote astronomy and sustainable astronomy tourism in South Africa.

The tour will conclude with the prestigious NSTF-South32 Awards Gala Dinner to be held at Emperor’s Palace, Kempton Park, Gauteng on 29 June 2017, where the NSTF Brilliants will be recognised and introduced to the science, technology and innovation sector.

The NSTF Awards will celebrate the United Nations 2017 International Year of Sustainable Tourism for Development, including the outstanding contributions that research has made to support sustainable tourism in South Africa.