STEM-Trek News

Thompho was born in a village called Tshikombani at Nzhelele, in the Limopopo Province of South Africa. He attended the Computer Training Institute (CTI) where he satisfied the requirements of beginning and advanced International Diploma in Computer Studies programs (IDCS). As an undergraduate scholar, he developed an academic keystone project to support technology in three village schools.

Since graduating with honors from the London Metropolitan University in the United Kingdom with a baccalaureate degree in computing and information systems, Thompho has held a variety of technical and tech service positions with increasing responsibility. He’s worked for the past two years as a network administrator for the University of Venda in Limpopo.

Thompho is enthusiastic about interfederated research and education …

Seforo is a lecturer at the National University of Lesotho in the Department of Physics and Electronics where he teaches courses on analogue, digital, and large-scale circuit designs. His academic and research interests involve wireless communication networks, remote control and monitoring of electronic appliances, high performance computing, particle physics, and renewable energy. As the university’s computer lab administrator, he supervises students, and supports researchers who use the high performance computing resources.

As a volunteer, he advises the Solar Turbine Group (STG), an international project that is building Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) systems for rural communities and health facilities in Lesotho. This expertise has made him the university’s go-to academic and advisory resource for questions relating to the installation or development of solar photo-voltaic (PV) systems. He has helped to shape the university’s academic curriculum to include the theory behind PV systems, system sizing, inter-federated and national power grid integration, budgeting, project planning, and more.

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Regina Maphanga hopes to form an HPC outreach program for South Africa that could serve as a template for use in the greater SADC region.

Maphanga completed bachelor of science degrees in mathematics and physics in 1998, a bachelor of science with honors degree in physics at the University of the North, South Africa in 1999, and a PhD in physics at the University of Limpopo, South Africa in 2005.

I’m eager to promote science, technology, engineering, and mathematics careers for women, and to become an HPC ambassador!”

She has served as a junior lecturer at the University of Limpopo since 2007, and as a postdoctoral research fellow from 2005-2006.  As a senior research scientist and physics lecturer in the U-Limpopo Materials Modeling Center, her …

George Anderson is a senior lecturer in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Botswana. He completed his PhD at the University of Johannesburg, South Africa with a thesis titled “Operating System Scheduling Optimization” under the supervision of Prof. Tshilidzi Marwala and Prof. Fulufhelo Vincent Nelwamondo. He graduated with an MS in Computer Science from Colorado State University and a BSc in Computer Science (First Class Honors) from the University of Botswana. He is a member of the ACM, SIGAI, SIGOPS, SIGMETRICS, SIGHPC, IEEE, IEEE CS, IEEE CI, and the Computer Society of Botswana.

His research and teaching interests are in System Software and Artificial Intelligence. He has taught several courses at the University of Botswana, including Operating Systems, Introduction to …

Damas Makweba completed his Bachelor of Computer Engineering degree in 2011 at Dar Es Salaam Institute of Technology (DIT) in Tanzania. After graduation, he worked for various companies as a Network Engineer, System Administrator and Facilitator where he configured network systems and conducted local and international workshops.

Since June 2012, Damas has served as chief technical officer at the Tanzania Education and Research Network (TERNET) where he’s responsible for network engineering and technical administration.

He also works for DIT as an Instructor in the India-Tanzania Center of Excellency in Information and Communication Technology (ICT) where he manages the …

Nosiku Sikanyika is a systems administrator for ZAMREN, the Zambian Research and Education Network in southern Africa.

Among her Zamren duties are maintaining the high performance computing systems and configuring all network hardware. Additionally, she supports Windows and Linux servers, and manages authentication, Eduroam, and web hosting services.

In Austin, Nosiku hopes to sharpen her HPC skills, and increase her professional network.  She looks forward to meeting many more sys admins at the Special Interest Group for HPC in Resource Constrained Environments Birds-of-a-Feather session (SIGHPC-RCE).

Since we’re building a shared cyberinfrastructure in the sub-Saharan SADC region, I hope fewer of us will be “resource constrained” in the future. I’m excited about the research and education initiatives we will …