Professor Chris Machio of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) was appointed Visiting Associate Professor at the University of Johannesburg (UJ) from 1 March 2022 to 28 February 2025.

Prof. Machio holds a PhD in metallurgy and materials engineering from the University of Witwatersrand and has been with the CSIR for 14 years.

“This appointment came about as a result of the collaborative work that we, at the CSIR, have been doing in the past years with the UJ, supervising students pursuing their Master’s and PhDs in metallurgy, as well as publishing a number of outputs with these students. It is a recognition of the value that we here at the CSIR and colleagues at UJ’s Department of Metallurgy can generate through collaboration,” says Prof. Machio.

“The expectation of my appointment is to attract and co-supervise Master’s and doctoral students and co-host postdoctoral researchers. We, at the CSIR, will provide some of the research projects and, in so doing, involve the researchers in finding and creating solutions to the problems that we currently face in our industry. We will guide the researchers on how to apply for funding from the National Research Foundation (NRF), so that they can support their research work. I will also be available to offer contact lectures at UJ, if needed. The ideal outcome of this appointment would be one where we make an impact in to generate impactful outputs, and expand our collaboration with other research networks,” he continues.

Machio is a member of the Corrosion Institute of Southern Africa and the South African Institute of Mining and Metallurgy and is now adding being a Visiting Associate Professor at UJ to his remarkable resume.

“I am happy that my career is on this positive trajectory, and I want to see what lies well beyond this. This appointment is a milestone for me because it means my peers in the academic field have looked at the work I have done and what I have contributed to the field of study and decided to appoint me based on merit. It makes me happy that I have achieved this. Another milestone and highlight is that I just got my NRF rating, which is allocated based on my recent research outputs and impact as perceived by CSIR peer reviewers,” he concludes.

Collaboration is one of the core values of the CSIR, which Prof. Machio, as an employee, has consistently epitomised. He was part of the team that won the Outstanding Contribution by a Research Team Award at the 2020 CSIR Excellence Awards.