A celebration of UCT research 2019-2020

The latest issue of the University of Cape Town’s (UCT) annual research publication Research & Innovation Highlights was launched at UCT’s first virtual annual research function last night, along with the sixth edition of the eResearch report.

The function, hosted by the UCT Research Office and Deputy Vice-Chancellor for Research and Internationalisation, Professor Sue Harrison, is a celebration of the year’s research achievements and the people behind them. 

The Research & Innovation Highlights 2019-20 digital publication casts a spotlight on some of the university’s most noteworthy research achievements, showcases significant projects, and offers an overview of the success of UCT research and innovation in numbers.

COVID-related research

This year’s edition includes a special section that focuses on UCT’s COVID-related research. 

“These stories really do illustrate the responsiveness of our community,” said Professor Sue Harrison, on the launch of the publication, “because COVID-19 – as we know – touched every facet of life across the world, bringing us a humanitarian and economic crisis, as much as a health one.

“This was a crucible moment for UCT, and the publication is a chance to look back and note that when the crisis called for collaboration, we responded.

“Naturally the pandemic has been the defining event of 2020, and our research community responded very quickly to the crisis, turning science into solutions, right across the disciplines. Yet we have also retained focus on moving forward in other areas, separate from COVID-19 – from climate change and technology, to the magistracy and gender equality.”

These and other significant research accomplishments – across all disciplines and from every faculty – can be seen in this year’s Research & Innovations Highlights publication. 

eResearch report 2019-2020

The research landscape is rapidly changing, with new technologies enabling new forms of collaboration, data gathering and analysis. UCT eResearch – a distributed organisation made up of a partnership between ICTS, UCT Libraries and the Research Office – is the university’s response to this changing research landscape.

The latest eResearch publication, eResearch report 2019-2020, explores what it means to be a research-intensive university in the African context, and how eResearch can facilitate the acceleration of local scholarship to contribute to global knowledge.