UCT Mastercard Scholar at Meeting of the Minds

In March 2019 University of Cape Town (UCT) Masters in Geomatics Graduate Natalia Dambe attended the Carnegie Mellon University hosted, Meeting of the Minds Research Symposium in Kigala, Rwanda.

Organised in Partnership with the Mastercard Foundation Scholars Programme, the event brought together students and researchers from across the Africa with the aim of exploring how academia can harness advances in Africa’s innovation economy to address problems and opportunities on the continent.

Being no stranger to technology and its usefulness in research, Natalia’s presentation at the symposium won her the award for best student research presentation.

“I presented on some of my research, which was for my masters. My thesis is based on using GIS and Remote Sensing technologies to model floods. I took a case study of my country, Malawi; specifically from a district called Chikwawa, and presented some of my findings.”

Her research found that during the years 1867 to 2003 only 8 floods were reported in her home country of Malawi. Since then, rapid climate changed has seen Malawi experience increasingly severe flooding, especially in the years 2012, 2013 and 2015.

Now an alumnus of the UCT Mastercard Foundation Scholars Program, Natalia is on a short academic sabbatical, working as an analyst for Global Energy Company, Enertag. She plans to return to academia in the coming years to further her research in collaboration with friends and colleagues from the recent conference and work towards a PhD in Geomatics.

See the image gallery of the Meeting of the Minds Symposium below:

For more about the Meeting of the Minds Research Symposium, visit the Carnegie Mellon University website here: https://www.africa.engineering.cmu.edu/research/meeting-minds.html

Story Lerato Mokhethi. Photos Supplied.