VUT student presents best poster

The winner of the EPPEI poster, Ms Lethukuthula Vilakazi

Staff reporter

The Eskom Power Plant Engineering Institute (EPPEI) offers practical and professional postgraduate engineering education that provides the opportunity to deepen knowledge in a key specialisation areas and, thus, create a clear career path for individuals.

EPPEI provides access to research funding and increased collaboration between different universities as well as between universities and industries.

In January 2017, Energy Efficiency (UCT) successfully started a collaboration with the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the Vaal University of Technology. The collaboration, supported by EPPEI, will see the development of research projects at VUT. The first project was one started by Ms Lethukuthula – Lethu – Vilakazi who works as a lab technician at VUT. She is registered for her M-Tech under the supervision of Prof Alfayo Alugongo (VUT) and Prof Pieter Rousseau (UCT).

Lethu was recently announced the winner of a poster competition held at the Power-GEN and Distribu TECH Africa Exhibition 2017.

The exhibition is an annual event bringing together a range of experts involved in every aspect of power generation and distribution. All students who are currently studying towards their Master’s or Doctorate under EPPEI had their topic posters displayed at the exhibition.

Competition participants came from UCT, UKZN, UP, VUT, SUN and Wits – to name just a few.

Each student had the responsibility to present his or her poster and explain what the project is about. Exhibitors and delegates were then asked to vote for the poster that was most interesting to them.

Ms Vilakazi came out tops!