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CSIR Student Chapter Annual Report 2008

The CSIR Student Chapter was formed at the end of last year and already has over 20 members. The 2007/2008 leaders were: Melanie McLaren – President Suja Joseph – Vice President Mapule De Gama – Secretary Cobus Jacobs - Treasurer Despite our youth, we have had a very active past year and we plan to continue in our efforts to promote optics and photonics. As our Chapter is the only SPIE chapter in South Africa, we held a Welcoming Function for all existing and potential members. In a typical South African fashion, we organised a relaxed braai (or barbeque, as it is more commonly known), on the CSIR premises. Members had a chance to mingle casually amongst themselves, while new students were introduced to the officers and were able to experience the benefits from joining the Chapter.

The chapter leaders: Dr. Andrew Forbes (Advisor), Suja Joseph (Vice-president), Mapule De Gama (Secretary), Melanie McLaren (President) and Cobus Jacobs (Treasurer)

In July of this year, the annual South African Institute of Physics (SAIP) conference was held in Polokwane, Limpopo. As part of our activity grant, our chapter purchased an exhibition table at the conference to showcase to students from around the country,

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the benefits of forming a student chapter. We were also able to give a brief report about our chapter at the annual Lasers, Optics & Spectroscopy group.

The CSIR Student Chapter booth at SAIP.

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Most of our members presented at the conference, some more than once. Angela Dudley won best PhD student Poster presentation in the Lasers, Optics & Spectroscopy group. While Melanie McLaren, received a Special Mention award for her oral presentation in the Applied Physics group.

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Angela receiving her award from the SAIP President, Professor Chetty.

Although we all understand the importance of networking, our Chapter has also invested in its members by nominating Melanie McLaren to receive the Travel Grant from SPIE. She used this wisely by presenting part of her Masters thesis at the Optics & Photnics conference in San Diego in August of this year. Four other students from our chapter; Angela Dudley, Andrew Mori, Liesl Burger and Tsephiso Mothibinyane, were also fortunate enough to attend this conference. Both Andrew and Liesl presented topics from their Masters work.

After delivering a well received talk, Liesl was all smiles!

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Melanie and Tshepiso in front of the SPIE Optics & Photonics booth in San Diego.

International relations. The South African and Irish chapters networking at a poster session at

O&P.

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While in San Diego, they attended the Student Chapter Leadership Workshop, where new friendships were immediately formed after an embarrassing dance-off game! Melanie helped facilitate the workshop together with other student volunteers. Several topics were discussed, but the discussions about outreach and how we can make a larger impact were most interesting to our chapter. We also manned a booth at O&P, which resulted in a number of hits on our website! South Africa has been increasingly developing it’s science program, resulting in an increase in the number of graduate science students. Our Chapter strongly believes in promoting science not only at university level, but more importantly, at the high school level. We therefore joined forces with an existing outreach program within the CSIR, and set out on a series of “science awareness” promotions. In April, Ally Mathye and colleagues, drove South to beautiful Grahamstown, for Science Fest.

A high school student experiences the exciting life of a scientist! Schools are given a tour of the industrial and scientific labs at the CSIR.

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A few weeks later, Science Week was held nation-wide. Science Week is a government initiative, which promotes science as a career. Brian Yalisi, Mapula Mametja and Melanie McLaren attended the event.

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Mapula and Brian stress the importance of studying science and demonstrate the applications of light.

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Science Week was held in Kimberley, home to the Big Hole, the largest man-made hole in the world. The mine yielded 2722 kg of diamonds during its 43 active years.

South Africa has an annual event to encourage female students to consider science as a career. “Take-a-girl-child-to-work” was supported by the CSIR, and in particular, by the students within our chapter. A number of the female members led a group of enthusiastic girls from various local schools through a tour of the lasers and optics labs. Many of the girls had dreams of becoming astronauts and were particular fascinated by the LIDAR experiments.

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A number of high school students from Oprah’s Academy for Girls participated in the annual national “Bring a Girl Child to Work Day”.

During the year, a few of our members completed their Masters dissertations. Bathusile Masina, Tshepiso Mothinbinyane and Edward Bernhardi all successfully completed their Masters earlier this year. Ed received his degree cum laude! Unfortunately for us, he decided to move to a colder climate for his PhD, and is now enjoying the town of Hengelo in Holland.

Edward enjoying the outdoors in Holland.

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To end off the year and elect new chapter leaders, a cheese & wine was held. New positions were also suggested in the form of Head of Outreach, Event Co-ordinator and Web Designer.

The new chapter leaders. From left: Angela Dudley (President), Dineo Moema (Secretary), Saturnin Ombinda-Lemboumba (Vice-President), Mapula Mametja (Head of Outreach), Brian

Yalisi (Event Co-ordinator), Melanie McLaren (Treasurer) and Cobus Jacobs (Web Designer).

Now that our chapter has a better understanding of the benefits of a chapter, we have discussed a few plans for next. We’d like to take advantage of the travelling lecturer program. Of course it is fairly expensive to travel to South Africa, so we plan to set up a week long workshop, where local lecturers will also be invited to speak. This will allow us to charge a small fee for non-members, which will be put forward to any additional expenses. This workshop will therefore act as an activity, so catering and accommodation expenses will be covered using activity grant money. This will require a great deal of organisation and will therefore most likely be held mid-way through 2009.

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2008/2009 Chapter Leaders: President – Angela Dudley, adudley@csir.co.za, 03225784 V-President - Saturnin Ombinda-Lemboumba, sombinda@csir.co.za, Secretary - Elsie Moema, dmoema@csir.co.za, Treasurer – Melanie McLaren, mmclaren@csir.co.za, 03178524 Additional Posts: Head of Outreach - Brenda Mametja, mmametja@csir.co.za Events co-ordinator – Brian Yalisi, byalisi@csir.co.za Web Designer – Cobus Jacobs, cjacobs@csir.co.za Current Member Roster: Mapule Degama Angela Dudley M. J. Daniel Esser Cobus Jacobs Preshon Jeebodh Suja Joseph-Malherbe Wayne Koen Palesa Leroala Cosmas Mafusire Gibion Makiwa Brenda Mametja Melanie McLaren Elsie Moema Andrew Mori Tshepiso Mothibinyane Saturnin Ombinda-Lemboumba Makungwane Pelle Hencharl Strauss

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Financial Information (2007/12/01 - 2008/11-30) Beginning account balance: R0.00 (07/12/01) Incoming funds: R 5,996.97 07/12/06 2007 SPIE Official welcoming function funding ($900) R 6,696.36 08/04/30 SPIE activity grant for SAIP Conference Total incoming funds: 12693.33 Expended funds: R 292.90 Banking fees (2007/12/01 - 2008/11-18) R3120.42 Chapter welcoming party (2008/04/24) R4612.87 Chapter advertising booth at SAIP Conference (2008/07/09) Total expended funds: R 8026.19 Ending account balance: R4667.14 (2008/11/18) Notes: Expenses has been compiled up to 2008/11/18. Expenses still be incurred in this year include funding for the chapter year-end Cheese and Wine function, to be held on 2008/11/26.