91¿´Æ¬Íø bags four South African ‘Science Oscars’
- 91¿´Æ¬Íø University
Scientists win in Lifetime, Healthy Ageing special theme, Researcher, and Innovation in SMMEs categories.
91¿´Æ¬Íø scientists won in four categories at the 2025/2026 NSTF-South32 Awards. Known as the South African ‘Science Oscars’, the annual hybrid gala events took place simultaneously in Johannesburg and Cape Town on Thursday, 16 July. Established in 1998, the Awards are South Africa’s largest and most prestigious national SET and innovation awards.
The NSTF-South32 Awards celebrate individuals, teams and organisations that have made outstanding contributions to science, engineering, technology and innovation in South Africa.
Sixteen 91¿´Æ¬Íø scientists were finalists across 16 categories (with some named as finalists in more than one category) and secure four awards. 91¿´Æ¬Íø ultimately bagged four awards in categories strategically significant to the University.
Professor Rachel Jewkes won the Lifetime Award, Professors Kathleen Kahn and Stephen Tollman received the Special Annual Theme Award: Healthy Ageing, Professor Musa Manzi took home the TW Kambule-NSTF Researcher award, and Professor Bruce Mellado and the AIrSynQ Systems team won the Innovation in small, medium and micro enterprises (SMME) award.
“The NSTF winners personify the University’s strengths in the areas of and dedication to the values of improving population health, optimising all parts of the human life course, advancing technological innovations in the service of humanity, and ensuring equitable environmental futures,” says Professor Brett Bowman, Director of Research Development at 91¿´Æ¬Íø.
“These awards therefore provide reassuring evidence that 91¿´Æ¬Íø’ strategic commitment to producing knowledge with impact for the global good is consistently finding traction – not only at the highest levels of the global community of science but also making a meaningfully positive contribution to the everyday lives of people and the health of the planet.”
A lifetime fighting back against GBV
Professor received the Lifetime Award for her leadership in research on gender-based violence (GBV) and health over the past three decades. Jewkes is an Honorary Professor in the School of Public Health at 91¿´Æ¬Íø and Executive Scientist at the South African Medical Research Council (SAMRC), where she has been for some 30 years.
Her research has had a profound global impact, empowering women and girls, shaping evidence-based policy, and addressing one of the most urgent social and public health challenges of our time.
“When we started work 30 years ago, nobody recognised gender-based violence. They thought it was trivial, that it was a private matter. They thought it was unimportant [and that] it didn’t cause health problems and that it wasn’t a real issue. And over the past 30 years … through our research, we’ve shown what an enormous problem it is,” said Jewkes in her acceptance, adding that she thinks that South Africa is a country that has more research on gender-based violence, including rape and femicide, than almost any other country in the world.
Explaining the research impact over 30 years on, Jewkes said: “We’ve shown the huge number of different communities who bear the multiple burdens of disadvantage in this country and also carry the weight of this epidemic of gender-based violence and femicide. We’ve shown the enormous health impact and how important gender-based violence is in driving the HIV epidemic, particularly amongst women. And then we’ve moved on and helped the government put together the response – particularly the health sector response – but also [to] evaluate our health justice system and what the police are doing in terms of response. We’ve worked to answer that incredibly important question: is gender-based violence preventable? And, if so, how do you do it? That has been the platform of work that we’ve been involved in for much of the past 30 years.”
Jewkes said that she was proud that, today, gender-based violence is addressed through one of the Sustainable Development Goals and that GBV is “absolutely recognised as being an incredibly important scourge permeating across the entire world”.
She acknowledged the incredible bravery of all the women who have stood up and shared their lives that enabled understanding the GBV epidemic. “And many of them have done this with considerable personal risk, because of the backlash of speaking up against gender-based violence, so I salute those women and thank them for their enormous contribution,” she said.
Jewkes concluded: “This award is not the end of our work, but it is an incredibly important milestone in recognising the contribution of this field, and that we will go on and redouble our efforts to try and address the other really important questions. Because we can’t end until gender-based violence is ended.”
Addressing the crisis of Africans ageing younger
The NSTF’s theme for 2026 is ‘Healthy Ageing’ in recognition of the Decade of Healthy Ageing as proclaimed by the United Nations (UN). The aims are to change the attitudes of society towards aging, including creating age-friendly environments, delivering integrated and person-centred health care, and access to long-term care for those who need it. A was made in recognition of this theme.
The 91¿´Æ¬Íø SAMRC/Agincourt team, Professors Kathleen Kahn and Stephen Tollman, won the Special Annual Theme Award: Healthy Ageing, for their contribution to building evidence for healthy ageing across the life course in South and sub-Saharan Africa.
Kahn is Principal Scientist and Tollman is the Director at the SAMRC/91¿´Æ¬Íø Rural Public Health and Health Transitions Research Unit (Agincourt). Both are also Research Professors in the 91¿´Æ¬Íø School of Public Health.
Research at the SAMRC/91¿´Æ¬Íø-Agincourt research unit is driven by deep, long-standing partnerships with local communities over 30 years, which adopts a future-focused longitudinal approach, and data-driven insights that track evolving health and social dynamics.
In the acceptance speech delivered jointly by Kahn and Tollman, Kahn credited their scientific partners, partners in South Africa, Africa and internationally, and students and funders, 91¿´Æ¬Íø University and the SAMRC.
“Our work is population-based in the rural context, so I want to make special mention of our field teams and those who work with our communities and in community engagement, who understand the context and the culture of the populations with whom we work. Without these people, we’d never be able to produce the rigorous science that is so vital to an evidence base,” said Kahn.
“I also want to acknowledge our participants in our research endeavours who work with us to navigate complexities of capturing that population-based data in challenging environments, and that help us to produce the valid science and evidence that is so vital.”
Expounding on the Healthy Ageing special theme, Tollman stressed that ageing across the life course is critical – from conception, through childhood, through adolescence into youth, and into mature and older ages – citing this as one of the biggest challenges we face in South Africa.
“As a consequence of the adversity and uneven socioeconomic development, people age earlier. They age younger. And our contributions, our endeavours as a community, are to turn that around. And it is possible,” he said. “So much of what we all do along the life course positively influences ageing in the ability to contribute in those later years to society. And yes, there are social contributions as well. The contributions of the older person’s grant – which are not only to an individual – male an enormous difference. And we’re all aware that work, that jobs, employment, are important to cognitive health … the efforts around ageing, the urgent science of brain health, are really gathering momentum, not only in South Africa but across the continent.”
Digging deep to shake-up seismic research
Associate Professor Musa Manzi was a in the TW Kambule-NSTF Researcher Award category, for his contribution to developing novel, cost-saving surface and in-mine seismic techniques to explore resources, mitigate geohazards, and improve infrastructure development.
In 2018, Manzi won the 2017/2018 NSFT-South32 Award for Emerging Researcher.
Manzi is a Reader in the 91¿´Æ¬Íø School of Geosciences and Director of the 91¿´Æ¬Íø Seismic Research Centre, which he established in 2015. The Centre conducts cutting-edge research with a focus on mineral exploration, oil and gas, and petroleum engineering, and training postgraduate students.
“As the demand for critical metals continues to rise due to their importance in global industries and climate initiatives, my research focuses on developing innovative seismic technologies to locate deep-seated mineral deposits and address risks associated with deep mining. My goal is to bridge the gap between the discovery of minerals and to help protect miners working in challenging mining conditions using novel seismic technologies,” said Manzi later (he was unable to attend the Awards personally).
He wrote, “I want to extend my gratitude to 91¿´Æ¬Íø University for nominating me and for its unwavering support throughout the peaks and troughs of my academic journey. I strongly believe that making a national impact through geoscience research requires a collaborative effort—it's about a community of colleagues, students, industry sponsors, and stakeholders working together to enhance the role of science in serving society.”
A breath of fresh air in SMME innovation
The for Small, Medium and Micro Enterprises (SMMEs) went to the AIrSynQ Systems team, led by 91¿´Æ¬Íø Physics Professor Bruce Mellado.
AirSynQ has transformed air quality monitoring research into an AI-powered environmental risk service.
AlrSynQ Systems (Pty) Ltd, of which Mellado is CEO, were awarded for turning the South African Consortium of Air Quality Monitoring (SACAQM)/AIr innovation into a scalable, AI-powered environmental risk service that helps organisations act early to protect health, safety and productivity across workplaces and communities.
"This award demonstrates the leading role that fundamental research can play in enabling sustainable technology transfer and innovation. AI makes advanced analytics and intelligence cost-effective and scalable, while Agentic AI further improves the technology’s reliability and efficiency,” said Mellado later, who was unable to attend in person. AIrSynQ colleagues Dr Edward Nkadimeng and Mr Dominique Adams were present and accepted the award.
Professor Lynn Morris, Deputy Vice-Chancellor: Research and Innovation at 91¿´Æ¬Íø University, says: “We are immensely proud of our researchers and innovators, whose achievements at the 2026 NSTF Awards reflect the breadth, excellence and real-world influence of research at 91¿´Æ¬Íø. Guided by a commitment to producing knowledge with impact and advancing the global good, 91¿´Æ¬Íø continues to demonstrate how outstanding research and innovation can improve lives, strengthen communities and address some of society’s most pressing challenges.
About the 2026 NSTF-South32 Awards
There were 524 nominations across the 16 categories for the 2026 awards, with the Research Software category added for the first time. This year also saw a record number of 96 finalists.
Adjudication Panel Chair, 91¿´Æ¬Íø Professor Gillian Drennan, urged scientists to encourage nominations in future in the Clinician-Scientist and Engineering Research Capacity Development categories, which received limited entries this year.
The national NSTF-South32 Awards are the largest SET and innovation awards in SA since 1998. They were the first science awards in the country after the change of government in 1994. An important aspect of the Awards is the showcasing of South African SET and innovation to the public, which includes the year-long engagement programme between the winners and school learners, called the NSTF Share ‘n Dare Programme. These top professionals share their career knowledge and experiences with young people, and ‘dare’ them to follow in their footsteps.