By: Nontobeko Moimane – 18 August 2023

Information and Communication Technology (ICT) students at the Vaal University of Technology (VUT) will soon be able to strut their stuff against fellow peers at national and global ICT competitions. This, following the formation of a student club by the ICT Department within the Faculty of Applied and Computer Sciences at VUT.

The primary aim of the club, whose membership is open to all ICT students across all academic levels, is to enhance members’ skills in creativity, programming, research, and presentations. The club will also undertake diverse projects, supported by a smart lab and lab assistant, facilitating project work and virtual lectures for competition readiness.

Currently, six members are already involved in the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR)’s Datathon Challenge, involving virtual data science training that took place from 3^rd to 7^th of July, and a project work that will run until 30 November, while the national competition is scheduled for 4 – 8^th of December this year at the CSIR International Convention Centre (ICC) in Pretoria.

The ICT Department collaborates with the National Institute for Theoretical and Computational Sciences (NITHeCS), enabling club members to partake in the upcoming 6^th NITheCS Summer School. This joint initiative between the Centre for High Performance Computing (CHPC) and NITheCS trains researchers in programming, data science, HPC, and computational sciences. Scheduled for January 29 to February 9, 2024, the school comprises online planning meetings and a two-week program encompassing Python basics, data science, Linux, HPC skills, advanced Python applications, machine learning, statistics, computational sciences, and domain-specific topics.

Ms. Immaculate Sibaya presently coordinates the ICT student club. She stated that the greatest benefit of this initiative is that students get to practically implement in a real-world setting, what they have learned in the lecture rooms.