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SARMS AND DUT BLAZER SUCCESSFULLY LAUNCHED AT THE DUT INNOVATION INDABA GALA DINNER

SARMS AND DUT BLAZER SUCCESSFULLY LAUNCHED AT THE DUT INNOVATION INDABA GALA DINNER

The Durban University of Technology (DUT), in partnership with the Department of Science and Innovation (DSI), eThekwini Municipality and the Technology Innovation Agency (TIA), hosted the exhilarating 2022 DUT Innovation Indaba at the Inkosi Albert Luthuli Durban International Convention Centre (Durban ICC) from Monday, 24 October 2022 to Thursday, 27 October 2022.

The theme of the 2022 DUT Innovation Indaba was: Taking academic innovation from idea to marketplace and its main objective was to strengthen the research and commercialisation practices for greater socio-economic impact.

The 2022 DUT Innovation Indaba culminated with a Gala Dinner, which included the launch of the South African Research Management System (SARMS) and the unveiling of the new DUT blazer, modelled by the former Mr and Miss DUT, Nkululeko Mbatha and Lungile Ngcobo.

At the Gala Dinner, Prof Keolebogile Motaung, Acting Deputy Vice-Chancellor: Research, Innovation and Engagement, thanked the DUT Vice-Chancellor and Principal, Prof Thandwa Mthembu, all of the delegates, DUT students, DUT academic staff, entrepreneurs, stakeholders, sponsors, partners, Audio-Visual and the DUT team that worked relentlessly to make the Innovation Indaba a success.

The DUT Registrar, Dr Maditsane Nkonoane delivered the official welcome and thanked guests for being part of this last segment of what was a very exciting four days at the 2022 DUT Innovation Indaba. Dr Nkonoane also expressed a special word of acknowledgement to the partners, namely the Department of Higher Education and Training, the Department of Science and Innovation and the eThekwini Municipality, who have, to a very large extent, anchored the Indaba.

“There’s also going to be a pioneering launch of SARMS. We are also going to close the segment with the launch of the official DUT blazer. May I just share with you what inspired the concept of having an official university blazer, a blazer that was designed by a DUT student. It is a home-grown product, again manifesting that this is a great university that has given birth to great minds,” he said.

Pictured: DUT Chief Information Officer, Dr Progress Mtshali, Nokuthula Ndlovu, Managing Director of Projectized Management, and DUT Senior Procurement Officer, Nirupa Kemraj formed part of the panel that facilitated the launch.

Dr Nkonoane further explained that the inspiration into the creation of an official blazer. “In 2019, we hosted a staff games function and there was an evening when we had a battle of university blazers, which we hosted at our Sports Centre. About 20 universities from South Africa were present and a number of staff from these universities proudly wore their official university blazers and my colleagues at DUT started confronting me and challenging me saying, but when are we going to have our own? Today we are going to have our own. It’s a great feat worthy of emulation even by our own peers,” he said.

After the official welcome, a beautiful, sustainable-themed fashion show ensued, followed by the official launch of the South African Research Management System (SARMS), which was introduced as the first single National Research Management System for South African Universities, National Research Institutions and the Private Sector, as well as the future of research management at DUT.

DUT Chief Information Officer, Dr Progress Mtshali, DUT Senior Procurement Officer, Nirupa Kemraj and Nokuthula Ndlovu, Managing Director of Projectized Management, formed part of the panel that facilitated the launch.

Projectized Management is an IT Consulting and Software Solutions company providing solutions to the private and public sector. The company also has a range of products developed in-house, together with its partners. One of these products is SARMS (South African Research Management System), a tool designed to elevate the status of research by making research and researchers in the country more visible by serving as a single national repository for all research related activities across all institutions engaged in research in South Africa.

Ms Ndlovu expressed her excitement to be launching the South African Research Management System (SARMS) for their first pioneers, DUT, which was aligned with ENVISION2030. She then explained that South African trained developers were used and in this way, they were also transferring skills to South Africa. “SARMS, is completely paperless and fully electronic,” she stressed.

She thanked the leadership team at DUT and applauded the university for leading by example in supporting African woman, black-owned, technology companies.

“I believe that KwaZulu-Natal can be the next Silicon Valley. Whenever there are problems, technology is an enabler. Technology can bring solutions. We’ve experienced COVID, we’ve experienced floods, we’ve experienced looting and one of the ways that we are going to resuscitate our economy in KZN, is through technology and people, they will be the enablers for us to achieve this. We partner with academia, we partner with business, we partner with the public sector and we partner with private sector,” said Ms Ndlovu.

Pictured: The former Mr and Miss DUT, Nkululeko Mbatha and Lungile Ngcobo showcasing the new DUT blazer at the Gala Dinner.

DUT Chief Information Officer Dr Progress Mtshali added to the conversation, speaking on the Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) platform at DUT, saying one of the perspectives of DUT’s ENVISION2030 is having green ecosystems to improve the efficiency of resource utilisation and decrease environmental risk. “What we have said is that at the hub of everything that we do at DUT is going to be the ERP system so that everything needs to be connected. And then we will have proper access control so that anybody anywhere can actually have access to whatever information that they actually have, SARMS is going to make a very big dent around against reducing paper,” he said.

He also spoke on the fact that SARMS is cloud based and that DUT has a cloud based strategy meaning where all DUT systems at least the critical systems are being deployed in the cloud and in that way DUT does not have a dependency on the physical building.

Prof Motaung also relayed that DUT’s strategy, ENVISION2030 and the perspective on systems and processes require the university.to accelerate the pace at which they operate and improve their business processes. She excitedly announced that SARMS was officially launched and functional, in real time, at DUT.

Besides the exciting SARMS launch, the dinner also launched the official DUT blazer, naming the winning, DUT engineering student, Mr Musamuhle Mabaso who created the exhilarating design, winning R10 000 for his effort.

Senior Director of Corporate Affairs at DUT, Mr Alan Khan, spoke of the context behind the conceptualisation of the blazer, confirming that earlier in the year, the Registrar had made a call to design a unique, authentic, university blazer for DUT.

“We have excellent skills and talent at DUT and we want our students and staff to play a positive role in defining our brand. The DUT logo, which was launched in 2012 was not designed by a global digital design agency. It was designed by our students, who were part of the Graphic Design incubator called Workspace, at Visual Communication Design in the Faculty of Arts and Design at DUT. So our students designed our logo and helped develop our corporate identity. We went back to our students and on the 6th of September, a group of adjudicators convened and we had around 30 different designs that were submitted. What we wanted was a design that was authentic, something that was different to what the other universities had; and a design that was in line with our corporate identity and uniquely DUT,” he said.

Mr Khan further explained the intricate design pattern saying that the blazer had on its lapel and running throughout the entire edge of the blazer, the six faculty triangles, in the faculty colours. “We have colours and patterns just above the pocket and the designer did an excellent job in making sure that it was still classy enough to wear for day or evening events,” he said.

Prof Motaung concluded with the vote of thanks, giving gratitude, in absentia, to the Vice-Chancellor and Principal Professor Thandwa Mthembu, the Chairperson of the DUT Council Mr Wiseman Madinane, including the Council members and thanked them for their support. She further expressed her heartfelt appreciation to all guests, conference speakers, sponsors, staff and students for their time, effort and contribution to making the 2022 DUT Innovation Indaba a success.

Pictured: Left to right: DUT Registrar, Dr Maditsane Nkonoane, Senior Director of Corporate Affairs at DUT, Mr Alan Khan, winning, DUT engineering student, Mr Musamuhle Mabaso, Prof Keolebogile Motaung, Acting Deputy Vice-Chancellor: Research, Innovation and Engagement, and Zwakele Ngubane. Director: Advancencement and Alumni Relations

Photographer: Khulasande Tshayile

Waheeda Peters

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