Some Notes from Meetings with EMC and UCT
10 May 2016


Meeting with Max Price, UCT Vice-chancellor:

- ARUA Association of Research Universities in Africa
- Possibility of sponsoring a PhD workshop across 16 countries, 100 people, for a week long seminar in CS
- We do not sign an MoU until we need it
- Possibly talk to ICTS (Sakkie van Rensburg)


Meeting with CS and Science colleagues:

Present:
- Patricia Florissi <patricia.florissi@emc.com>, EMC
- Hussam Ramadan <Hussam.Ramadan@emc.com>, EMC
- Marwa Zaghow <Marwa.Zaghow@emc.com>, EMC
- Patrick Woudt <pwoudt@ast.uct.ac.za>, HoD: Astronomy
- Francesca Little <francesca.little@uct.ac.za>, HoD: Statistical Sciences
- Miguel Lacerda <Miguel.Lacerda@uct.ac.za>, Statistical Sciences
- Warren Smit <warren.smit@uct.ac.za>, African Centre for Cities
- Hussein Suleman <hussein@cs.uct.ac.za>, HoD: Computer Science
- Rob Simmonds <robert.simmonds@uct.ac.za>, CS + Data Intensive Astronomy
- Maria Keet <mkeet@cs.uct.ac.za>, CS
- Michelle Kuttel <mkuttel@cs.uct.ac.za>, CS
- Tommie Meyer <tmeyer@cs.uct.ac.za>, CS

Patricia:
- 3 areas at EMC
-- digital banking and microfinance
-- digital cities
--- management of food, transport, public safety
-- worldwide scale computation (hadoop)
--- democratization of software stack, openness
--- localization of computation, optimal data distribution patterns
- sensors, iot, drones

Hussam:
- management of research
- how to run collaborative research project
- PhD training
- work with NRF towards research chair
- centres of excellence: consultancy, training, ...
- certifications for modules

Patrick/Rob:
- should work with Institute for Data Intensive Astronomy, Russ Taylor
- some data security within the partnership
- 1.6 Tbytes/s, petabyte of data per day
- Africa Research Cloud, openstack

Marwa:
- collaboration on education
-- Masters degree coursework
-- big data, analytics, cloud computing, backup and recovery, information storage management, etc.

Patrick:
- jointly-funded academia/industry postdocs

Francesca:
- curriculum as transition in programmes at UCT

Other comments:
- internships at EMC
- industrial advisory board
-- industrial engagement charter


Meeting with Hussein, HoD: CS:

- possible exploration of coursework at Honours or Masters levels, especially in Data Science [Francesca]
- internships and ambassadors [Hussein/Marwa]
- honours projects [competition: Envision the Future] [Michelle/Marwa/Hussein]
* send Francesca's and Miguel's email addresses to Marwa
- sponsored lab for computing at UCT? [Francesca/Marwa]
* individual links between EMC and ACC, SKA, CS, Statisics
- research chair [Hussein/Marwa]
* Ask research office about possibility of joint chairs, maybe a UCT/EMC Research Chair in Big Data