Sachin Ravjee, a Masters student in the Department of Civil Engineering, won the award for best presentation at the recent South Afrcian Young Geotechnical Engineers Conference held from 13 to 15 Sept 2017 at Salt Rock on the Kwazulu-Natal North Coast.  Sachin's paper and presentation was entitled "Modelling Thermal Movement Behind Integral Bridge Abutments Using Discrete Element Modelling (DEM)".  Sachin is using unique DEM software developed in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at TUKS running on graphics processors which speed up processing time by two orders of magnitude.  Sachin will be sponsored by the Geotechnical Division of the SA Institution of Civil Engineers to attend the next International Young Geotechncial Engineers Conference in Sydney, Australia.  Sachin is supervised by Prof SW Jacobsz of the Department of Civil Engineering and Dr Nico Wilke of the Deparment of Mechanical Engineering.