Media Releases

PRETORIA – On Monday 30 November, the University of Pretoria (UP) officially opened its state-of-the-art Engineering 4.0 facility, which focuses on research on smart transport, cities and infrastructure.

The CSIR is putting together a forecast of the upcoming US presidential elections to conduct a successive test of the performance of its election prediction model into the US electoral system. This follows a successful trial during the US 2016 presidential elections.

The CSIR’s election prediction model relies on two core principles relating to voting behaviour of the electorates and the order in which voting results are declared on the night of the Election Day. These two principles combined allow the CSIR team to group voters (or rather voting districts) together based on their past voting behaviour (using a statistical clustering method) and to then expect that any changes to voting behaviour in the new election will be fairly similar within each group.

The Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), an entity of the Department of Science and Innovation, today unveiled a refreshed brand and positioning statement as part of its strategy to intensify its impact on society.

Recently adopted by the organisation, the strategy is aimed at amplifying the ‘I’ in ‘CSIR’, to intensify its focus on industrial development and a more aggressive quest for impact, in keeping with the organisation’s mandate to improve the quality of life of all the people of South Africa.

In a rigorous journey that unfolded over the past two years, the CSIR has worked with its stakeholders to define a new vision for itself, guiding how the organisation must fulfil its mandate in the context of South Africa’s current challenges.

The CSIR vision is supported by a new mission, objectives and values, which are the building blocks of the refreshed CSIR brand.

South Africa’s largest energy efficiency initiative, the SA Industrial Energy Efficiency Project, has won the highest international accolade for an energy programme – the International Energy Project of the Year – awarded by the global Association of Energy Engineers (AEE).

The award was accepted by national project manager, Alf Hartzenburg, of the National Cleaner Production Centre (NCPC-SA) at the AEE International Virtual Awards ceremony, held on Wednesday, 14 October 2020. AEE members and executives from around the world responded with enthusiastic accolades when the summary of the Industrial Energy Efficiency (IEE) Project’s achievements was read by the Chairperson of the awards committee. 

The IEE Project, which has been led by the NCPC-SA and the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) since 2010, received the award in recognition of its efforts in transforming the energy use patterns in South African industry, and mainstreaming energy management systems across economic sectors. Since its first implementation projects in 2011, the IEE Project team has assisted industrial companies to save 6.5 TWh of energy, translating to cumulative cost savings of R5.3 billion in these companies.