Candice
Rajah and Nicholas Ngcobo are 2nd year students who
were employed during the vacation in 2004. They collected together
available multiwavelength data on the region of sky which the
Atacama
Cosmology Telescope
will cover and searched for overdense regions in the SUMSS radio
survey.
Nelisiwe
Somhlahlo and Bianca Smith were Honours students at
UKZN in 2003, seen here at the SAAO summer school in Cape Town.
Neli and Bianca received bursaries through Dr Cress' research
grant and Bianca has often been employed during vacations. For
their Honours' projects Neli was working on an Astrobiology review
and Bianca was studying the clustering of radio-selected quasars.
Neli is now working on semiconductor research and Bianca models
seismic activity in mines.
Thembinkosi
Shabalala completed his Honours degree in 2002. He worked on
two Astronomy projects: one involving Cataclysmic Variables (in
collaboration with Steve Potter at SAAO and Sonja Isaacs at UCT),
the other involving studies of M31. In January 2003, he was
awarded funding to attend an X-ray data processing workshop in
India. Have a look at his
pictures.
Thembinkosi now works for De Beers.
Nicolas
Thantsha completed his Honours degree in 2002. In his project
he studied galaxies behind the Milky Way in collaboration with
Patrick Woudt at UCT. He is currently working on solar cell
research
Ashen
Bhagwandin is a third-year student. In 2003, he was employed
to work on data from the Keck telescope. In 2002, he helped
develop astronomy education materials
As an Honours student, Tleyane
Sono built a 10-inch telescope under the supervision of Dr. Couling. He completed his MSc thesis in Optics at UKZN and was temporarily employed by Dr. Cress to investigate
photometric redshift software which can be used on sources in the
FIRST radio survey. He is currently doing
a PhD in Southhampton
Humphrey
Sithebe completed his Honours degree in 2001. He worked on a
project involving quasars identified in the FIRST radio survey.
His trip to New York was part-funded by collaborators on the
project. He is now working for De Beers.
Lawria
Dannahauser completed her Honours degree in 2001. She worked
on estimating redshifts of radio galaxies in the FIRST radio
survey. She now works in the IT industry but was considering
returning to academia.
Amos
Kubeka completed his Honours degree in 2001. He worked on
cosmological scale N-body simulations, using semi-analytic galaxy
formation models to model magnetic field distributions in the
intra-cluster medium. He now works as a data analyst in Gauteng.
Comfort
Mankga, Mokgoropo Makgaba, Hlulukwenza Mbatha, Bianca Smith and Ed
Elson (seen here at Hartebeesthoek Radio Observatory) were
employed during the vacation. Mokgoropo and Comfort received
bursaries through Dr Cress' NRF research grant.
Thomas
Mautjana and Mabitsi Legodi on the trip to the Tswaing
meteor crater. Thomas completed his Honours degree in 2002. For
his Astronomy education project he prepared information about the
total solar eclipse in Zulu, Pedi and Xhosa. Mabitsi obtained a
bursary through Dr Cress' NRF research grant, as did Thabo
Sebeya (not shown).