Vice-Chancellor’s Distinguished Award – MOST PROMISING YOUNG RESEARCHER OF THE YEAR
Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment – Department of Chemical Engineering
Dr Nastassia Thandiwe Sithole is a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Chemical Engineering within the Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment. Her research is in the field of Environmental Engineering with a particular focus on the circular economy through waste valorisation and solidification together with remedial treatment for wastewater using secondary resources, turning industrial solid waste into useful building and construction material, and resource recovery. Dr Sithole’s research aims to develop zero-waste discharge models and value-added products from waste material for use in different building and construction applications. Her research areas are driven by the need to attain or achieve the United Nations’ Sustainable Developmental Goals (SDGs). Since her employment at UJ in 2016, Dr Sithole has attracted over R2.3 million in grants and an additional R5.7 million was received from applications where she was a co-investigator.
She has won numerous awards, including the most recent award by the National Research Foundation (NRF) for Research Excellence Award for Early Career/Emerging Researchers in Engineering, as well as the Outstanding Contribution in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (Inspiring Fifty) award. In 2023, Dr Sithole published 14 journal articles (the majority of which were in high-impact factor (IF) journals). Since 2018, Dr Sithole has published a total of 50 papers. She has also contributed presentations at numerous international conferences, including keynote presentations, and has recently filed a patent. Dr Sithole is an active member of technical committees, contributing to the advancement of Engineering, the circular economy, societal impact, and SDGs. She was recently appointed to serve on the Department of Higher Education and Training’s Engineering and Technology subpanel whose role is to evaluate research outputs submitted in this discipline. Dr Sithole’s bibliometric profile shows growing impact – with a Google Scholar h-index of 8; and a Scopus h-index of 6. Furthermore, she has a strong international collaboration network that currently includes 12 collaborators/institutions. Her research has numerous benefits for South Africa, which paved the way for her appointment as a board member and technical advisory chair at the platinum incubator (TPI). She strategically chaperoned the TPI in executing industrial application duties by providing innovative and holistic support to PGM beneficiation.
