Professor Mario Santos awarded NRF A1 rating​

Professor Mario Santos, from the Department of Physics and Astronomy, has been awarded an NRF A1 rating for the period 2026 to 2031. This follows his first A rating in 2020, and is a fantastic achievement, one that can be celebrated by Mario, by the department, and by the faculty.

Mario is a SARChI Chair and the Director of the Centre for Radio Astronomy at UWC. His A1 rating recognises his world-leading contributions to cosmology with radio telescopes. He is the Principal Investigator of the MeerKLASS project, currently the largest observing project on MeerKAT. MeerKAT, located in the Karoo, is widely recognised as one of the best radio telescopes in the world, and is a precursor instrument for the international Square Kilometre Array telescope.

Since 2013, Mario has been developing the science and the team to use MeerKAT for cosmology. The MeerKLASS team includes UWC staff, students and postdoctoral fellows, together with national and international collaborators. Under Mario’s leadership, MeerKLASS has developed the first data pipeline for radio cosmology, which has been used to make the first detections of the cosmological signal. This groundbreaking work is essential for cosmology with the SKA and forms an important foundation for a leading South African role in this field.

It is also lovely that this recognition comes in the same week that the South African Institute of Physics is hosting its annual conference on our campus. Mario was involved in organising the astronomy and astrophysics school as part of the conference programme on Monday, and I saw him scurrying around very busily. It is good to have our top scientists engaging at all levels. I know that Mario invests a great deal not only in building the astronomy group, but also in strengthening the department and the faculty.

We are very grateful to Mario, very proud of this achievement, and wish him well for the next phase of his work.