Student achievements

Annemie Vermeulen, an alumna of the Department of Architecture, won the 33rd Annual Corobrik Regional Architecture Award.

Annemie is one of eight young architects from top South African universities to receive this award in recognition of her design talent and innovation. Her dissertation was titled “Exploring the potential of latent space in the inner city of Pretoria: Toward architectural remedies for regenerating and weaving latent urban fabric and spaces”. The dissertation re-imagines architecture from separated built objects to threads of spaces interlinked by open areas that encourage interaction between different city users.

Two of the Faculty’s students received recognition for their excellent projects at the 16th Annual Student Colloquium of the Southern African Institute of Mining and Metallurgy (SAIMM).

This event is intended to give the best students in the fields of mining and metallurgy the opportunity to present their final-year projects, and industry experts have the opportunity to meet top young professionals who are about to embark on their careers in industry. Shonny Thuketana from the Department of Materials Science and Metallurgical Engineering placed first, and Lulama Mthembu from the Department of Mining Engineering placed third.

The Greenovate Awards resulted from the collaborative efforts between Growthpoint Properties and the Green Building Council South Africa (GBCSA). Its intention is to encourage students to learn about green buildings and sustainability.

The research project of Henno de Villiers and Liné Grobler from the Department of Construction Economics was named the 2019 winner. Their research project was titled "Pushing back Day Zero – water-saving strategies for me and you".

Each year, student teams from the Faculty fare extremely well in local intervarsity engineering challenges. These students demonstrate their ability to translate the knowledge gained in their study programmes into real-world solutions.

The Faculty’s teams were awarded the Best University certificate in the 2019 Aeronautical Society of South Africa Intervarsity Flight Competition after they took first and third places. Here, final-year aeronautical engineering students built their own model aircraft and competed in the Balls Speed Race. The University of Pretoria’s TuksBaja team also emerged as the overall winner in this year’s action-packed Baja South Africa Competition of the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE). This is an international engineering design competition in which undergraduate students have to conceptualise, design, manufacture and test an off-road car that complies with strict safety rules.