Tshiamo Motshegwa is a researcher, lecturer and postgraduate coordinator in the computer science department at the University of Botswana (UB). His experience with and enthusiasm for human and technical collaborations make him an important contributor to the SADC regional framework for shared HPC and “Big Data.” He is also coordinating a project to develop an HPC Data center for the university.
Tshiamo completed part 2 of a bachelor of science degree (Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics) at UB and won a Botswana sponsorship to attended City University London in the United Kingdom (UK) for a BEng Honours in Computer Systems Engineering (Computer science and Electronic engineering). He then completed a computer science PhD through a City University PhD Scholarship. His PhD thesis focused on multiagent and distributed systems.
While completing his undergraduate studies in the UK, Tshiamo worked for British Energy in Lancashire on a one-year industrial attachment project. While completing his PhD, he contributed to several European Union-funded projects, including the EU FP6/FP7 Agentcities RTD -test bed for a Worldwide Multiagent Network (research and deployment). A research fellowship with British Telecom’s Adastral Park research and innovation laboratories (BTExact technologies) in Marttlesham, Ipswich, UK allowed him to work on the multiagent systems toolkit, Zeus.
In addition to distributed computing, Tshiamo’s interests include research uptake, technology transfer, innovation, multi-disciplinary and multi-stakeholder collaborations, student mentoring, and the development of grassroots innovation movements. To this end he worked on a Southern African Innovation Support Program (SAIS) sponsored project with colleagues from the Botswana Innovation Hub Science Park and UB Office of Research and Development to set up a Botswana National Technology Transfer Office in collaboration. The project was also in collaboration with SADC regional partners from Namibia Business Innovation Center (NBIC), and Zambia’s National Technology Business Center (NTBC).
In the UB computer science department, Tshiamo teaches first-year, undergraduate courses on principles of programming (Python), and object oriented programming (Java) to students enrolled in computer science, physical sciences, engineering, education, and business programs. He also teaches an advanced course in systems programming, and serves on a team that is updating the computer science curriculum to include coursework on distributed systems, parallel & concurrent programming, HPC, and data science. As the HPC center coordinator, he hopes their facility will serve the university’s multidisciplinary research community, become a national point-of-presence on the SADC regional cyberinfrastructure, and facilitate data processing for the Square Kilometer Array project.
Tshiamo serves on a Botswana government’s Ministry of Science and Technology task team to investigate the use of space and satellite technologies. He also participates on a UK Royal Society-DFID Africa Capacity Building Initiative project with colleagues from UB Chemistry, University College London, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, and Addis Ababa University around a project that aims to employ state of the art computational techniques and HPC cyberinfrastructure in the development of sustainable energy solutions.
