Surprise best-paper award for engineering student

Hilary Chisepo stumbled to the stage to collect the award for best paper at the annual Southern African Power and Energy Conference on 1 February.

Chisepo, a master's student in UCT's Department of Electrical Engineering, along with his peers, was "very hot and tired" at the end of the conference and was waiting for the announcement of the winner of the best-paper prize so that they could all go home.

As a first-time author, Chisepo wasn't expecting to win from among more than 70 entrants at the conference, held at the North-West University.

"I had already removed my jacket and my shirt was already loose [when they called my name]" laughs Chisepo. "It was a very good feeling."

Chisepo credits his group - the Geomagnetically-Induced Currents (GIC) group, led by Professor Charles Gaunt - for his award. "We meet regularly and we present to each other and we give each other constructive criticism. It's because of sharpening each other's work, week in, week out, that we end up doing something that can be considered to be the best paper," he says.

Chisepo's paper, titled Testing the Response of Laboratory Bench Transformers to Geomagnetically Induced Like Currents, investigates the effects normal space activity has on electrical power grids. It was co-authored by Chisepo, Gaunt and doctoral student David Oyedokun.