Surendra “Colin” Thakur, Director of e-Skills CoLab at DUT, won the Best Paper Award in session 16 of the 6th International Conference on Adaptive Science and Technology (ICAST), at the Covenant University, Nigeria, recently.
The workshop was organised by Covenant University in partnership with the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE).
Titled: Transforming the voting paradigm – the shift from inline, to online to mobile voting, the paper states that traditional poll-site voting methods poise multiple administrative and logistical challenges such as scalability, cost, voter misinterpretation and miscounts.
It continues to state that there is a noticeable decline in voter turnout, particularly amongst the youth, and proposes a novel mobile voting model that uses a common-off-the-shelf (COTS) mobile device, in conjunction with both a Near Field Communication (NFC) tag and a pragmatic multimodal biometric identification system.
In writing the paper, Thakur was supervised by Professors Oludayo Olugbara and Richard Millham, both from the Information Technology Department at DUT, as well as the late Professor Prenitha (Penny) Singh who was also a Professor at the University. Dr Harold Wesso, Ikamva National e-Skills Institute (iNeSI) CEO (Acting) and Mymoena Sharif, also from iNeSI, sponsored Thakur’s research.
The conference featured exhibits and tutorials which gave participants new insight and skills relevant to their area.
According to its website, ICAST is one of the fast-growing, open-call, double-blind peer-reviewed and international conference series in technology and innovation. The objectives of ICAST include promoting innovation, research and development activities in electrical and electronic engineering, computer science, software development, general technology and allied areas.
Thakur has been working closely with the Independent Electoral Commission since 2010, researching and determining, through research, what impact e-voting could have in South Africa in time to come.
“The concept was enthusiastically received when we first presented it as part of my PhD to the Computer and Social Scientist Review in India which is a country using electronic voting”, said Thakur.
Prof Olugbara said he is highly enchanted that the research was widely accepted by colleagues as a novel work, adding that the ICT (Information and Communications Technology) is a challenging and a swiftly changing field that requires creativity in order for advancement.
– Talent Buthelezi
Pictured: Surendra “Colin” Thakur, the recipient of the Best Paper Award in session 16 of the 6th International Conference on Adaptive Science and Technology (ICAST), at the Covenant University, Nigeria.
