Academic Achievers' Awards 2019

Vice-Chancellor's Scholarly Book Award

The University of Pretoria introduced the Vice-Chancellor’s Book Award to recognise and reward authors of scholarly books, monographs, and collections. The prizes are awarded once a year in two categories, namely humanities and social sciences (broadly defined) or natural and applied sciences. In 2018 two awards, one in the humanities and social sciences, and another in the natural and applied sciences, were made. 

Practical Mathematical Optimization - Basic Optimization Theory and Gradient-Based Algorithms (Second Edition)
Professor Daniel Wilke
Professor Jan Snyman
Deceased

Exceptional Academic Achievers

This award is made annually to senior academics who have already achieved the status of professor, are regarded highly by their peers, and have consistently excelled in the areas of under- and postgraduate teaching and learning, research, community service and administration over a period of time. Any academic who has been awarded an A-rating by the NRF in the year under consideration automatically qualifies as an Exceptional Achiever for as long as he or she remains an A-rated researcher. 

Professor Walter Focke

Exceptional Young Researchers

This award is given to exceptional young achievers in the field of research, as seen against the University’s strategic goals of achieving academic excellence, international competitiveness and local relevance. Any person who has been evaluated by the NRF as a P-rated researcher automatically enjoys Exceptional Young Researcher status.

Professor Daniel Wilke	Dr Deon Brink

Teaching Excellence and Innovation Laureate Awards

The Laureates are awarded to nominated projects that display teaching practices with clear purpose and intent, and which have a strong alignment between the different elements in the broader context, to address identified needs or gaps with the aim of innovating to optimise teaching and learning. These nominations show significant evidence of impact on student learning, are sustainable and can be replicated in other contexts. These projects contribute to best practice in teaching and display significant evidence of innovation that addresses the identified challenges.

Dr Riana Steyn

Dr Riana Steyn is a lecturer in the Department of Informatics. Dr Steyn received the following significant recognitions and/or awards in the past three years: 2018 Association of Information Systems (AIS) Award for Innovation in Teaching 2018 EBIT Faculty Teaching and Learning Award winner 2019 International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) TC 3—Education South    African representative

Community Engagement Award

The Community Engagement Award is awarded annually to one individual to recognise community engagement as a long-standing and valued tradition in higher education and an extensive, high-impact practice in teaching at the University of Pretoria.

The criteria for the award are aligned to those for the MacJannet Award, which is internationally administered by the Talloires Network.  

Dr Carin Combrinck