Wits Research Office recognition for academics awarded by the National Research Foundation
- Wits University
The luncheon celebrated Wits NRF A-rated academics as well as scholars awarded previously but not formally acknowledged in person due to lockdown restrictions.
The Wits Research Office, within the Office of the Deputy Vice-Chancellor (DVC): Research and Innovation, hosted the event in the Council Chambers at Wits on 26 July 2022.
The ceremony paid tribute to Wits scientists to whom the NRF in 2022 awarded an A-rating for the first time or re-awarded an A-rating, as well as to those otherwise awarded by the NRF in 2020/2021 but whom the University could not officially congratulate in person at that time, due to pandemic lockdown restrictions.
- Newly A-rated scientists include Professor Victor Houliston, Professor Hilary Janks, Professor David Limebeer, and Professor Derick Raal.
- Wits scientists who were re-awarded A-ratings include Professor Lenore Manderson, Professor Norman Owen-Smith, and Professor Lynn Morris.
- Professor Linda Richter had received the NRF Lifetime Achievement Award in 2020 and was officially acknowledged in person at the luncheon.
Professor Zeblon Vilakazi, Vice-Chancellor and Principal, Professor Lynn Morris, DVC: Research and Innovation, and Dr Robin Drennan, Director: Research and Innovation hosted the Wits awardees as well as invited guests Dr Makobetsa Khati, Executive Director: Research Chairs and Centers of Excellence at the National Research Foundation (NRF), and Professor Ernest Aryeetey, Secretary-General of the African Research Universities Alliance (ARUA).
ARUA is a network of 16 African universities, including Wits, across 10 African nations. These universities envisage making African researchers and their institutions globally competitive while contributing to the generation of knowledge for the socio-economic transformation of Africa. Wits hosts two ARUA Centres of Excellence: Materials, Energy and Nanotechnology (CoE-MEN), and in Migration and Mobility.
Speaking at the luncheon Khati commended Wits academics on their NRF ratings and noted that the University boasts the second highest number of A-rated researchers in the country, constituting some 28% of the total. Wits currently has 24 NRF A-rated scientists.
Khati however lamented the lack of women in NRF ratings nationally and that the average age of an NRF A-rated researcher is 64.5 years. He encouraged Wits to “run its own race” and to “value collaboration over competition and focus on the three i’s – impact, innovation and importance [of research]”.
Vitamin C for Wits NRF C-rated researchers
Morris, herself twice NRF A-rated, quipped, “If you’ve got an A-rating, you’ve got a few grey hairs …” in reference to the “brutal process” that an NRF rating demands when one’s research is put through “the eye of the needle” and rigorously scrutinised by independent peers worldwide.
She reiterated Wits’ commitment to training the next generation of researchers, with incentives and programmes such as the Wits Vitamin C Programme. This programme funds newly C-rated academics with a once-off contribution of R50 000.
An NRF C-rating denotes established researchers with a sustained recent record of productivity in the field who is recognised by their peers as having produced a body of quality work – the core of which has coherence and attests to ongoing engagement with the field – and has demonstrated the ability to conceptualise problems and apply research methods to investigating them. Wits currently has 219 C-rated researchers.
Morris stressed the benefits to researchers of an NRF rating, which include an investment in one’s own scholarship, an opportunity to critically review one’s own academic achievements, and access to some (although limited) financial benefits from the NRF.
Newly minted as A-rated
To obtain an NRF A-rating, a researcher must be recognised by their peers as a leading international scholar in their field based on the high quality and high impact of their recent research output.
Emeritus Professor of English Victor Houliston, Applied English Language Studies Emeritus Professor Hilary Janks, Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Information Engineering. David Limebeer, and endocrinologist Professor Derick Raal, all of whom received A-ratings for the first time in 2022, attended the lunch.
Consistently world-class
Wits academics who were re-awarded A-ratings in 2022 and who attended the lunch included mathematician Professor Florian Luca, medical anthropologist Professor Lenore Manderson, and Wits’ own Deputy Vice-Chancellor: Research and Innovation, Lynn Morris, an HIV virologist.
Norman Owen-Smith, Emeritus Research Professor of African Ecology was A-rated again for an astonishing fifth time.
Academics to whom the NRF previously awarded an A-rating in 2021 include Distinguished Professor of Archaeology, Christopher Henshilwood and Distinguished Professor in the Evolutionary Studies Institute (ESI), Bruce Rubidge.
The late Professor Bob Scholes had received his third A-rating and Professor Mary Scholes accepted her late husband's A-rating certificate at the Research Office luncheon.
Professor Andrew Forbes (pictured above), A-rated in 2018, also attended the luncheon.
An academic lifetime of Birth-to-10, 20, 30
Distinguished Professor Linda Richter in the Department of Science and Innovation-NRF Centre of Excellence in Human Development (CoE-Human) had received the 2020 NRF Lifetime Achievement Award.
The Research Office recognised this exceptional accolade in person at the July 2022 luncheon which, at the time of the award in 2020, could only be acknowledged virtually due to lockdown.
An NRF A1-rated researcher, Richter is a developmental psychologist with over 450 publications on basic and policy research in child and family development. She is the Principal Investigator of several large-scale, long-term collaborative projects, including Birth to Twenty Plus, a birth cohort study of 3 273 South African children with follow-up for 28 years. The (now) Birth to Thirty (Bt30) study in Soweto is Africa’s largest and longest-running birth cohort study.
Bt30 tracks the lives of some 3 000 people born in South Africa in the early 1990s and known affectionately as ‘Mandela’s Children’. These children are now 32-years-old. In August 2022, Richter launched her book, titled Birth to Thirty: A study as ambitious as the country we wanted to create.
The NRF Lifetime Award recognises Richter’s extraordinary contribution, of international standard and impact, to the development of science in and for South Africa over an extended period of time, and for the manner in which her work has touched or shaped the lives of many South Africans.
WATCH a video by Richter explaining her research and colleagues’ comments on her contribution.