Bio: Dr Surendra Thakur (Colin) completed a DTech in Information Technology, of which his research focused on “System Architecture for Secure Mobile Internet Voting”. Additionally, Colin has presented various papers with reference to RFID and has received the Best Paper Award at the DUT Informatics Conference in the years 2007 and 2008.

Colin has served on many executive forums over the years such as EXCO, SENATE, Faculty Board, etc. He was also the National Treasurer of the Computer Society of South Africa (CSSA) for a year, and later on the Chair of the KZN Computer Society of South Africa for three years, and Vice-Chairman for two years.

Thakur was commissioned by the Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC) to undertake an international study of electronic voting (e-voting) practices completed in 2012 called “Electronic Voting – the cross-national experience.” This was a comprehensive study of all countries trialing, piloting, implementing, using and then abandoning e-voting. He also evaluated the effectiveness Voter Registration practices with a particular focus on technology on behalf of the UNDP (2013). Additionally Colin has delivered 6 keynotes on this topic, wrote five papers and was an international observer in the 2011 Zambian election. He has observe two e-voting elections this year. He along with Prof Olugbara are developing a multimodal biometric voter validation system to leverage the ubiquity of mobile devices as a voting tool.

Colin is currently the Director of the NEMISA KZN e-Skills CoLab at the Durban University of Technology which is tasked with e-skills in general, and particularly on the e-enablement of government services for effective service delivery, with a focus on e-democracy and e-participation. Collin has also conceptualized and introduced InvoTech, an innovation incubator at DUT, where one of his patents is being registered. International E-Voting expert. Emerging expert in Social Media. National authority on Big Data.
Director of the KZN Digital CoLab

Courses Currently Teaching: Big data
Online Netiquette: Managing your Digital Footprint

Research and Innovation focus: BankSeta Research Chair on Digitalisation.
e-voting, e-democracy, social media, entrepreneurship.