RISING STARS

2021 FUTURE 50 HONOREE

Innocentia Mahlangu (BSc Eng 2011, MSc Eng 2018), a senior engineer and project manager at Hatch, has been honoured by her inclusion in the Project Management Institute’s 2021 Future 50 list. The list includes other dynamic leaders such as British footballer Marcus Rashford who has made strides in the fight to end child food poverty in Britain.

Mahlangu was acknowledged for “tackling tough infrastructure projects with an eye toward social and economic change”. She was recognised by the Mail & Guardian as one of the Top 200 Young South Africans in 2018. She received the Young Engineer of the Year Award for 2019 in the South African Institution of Civil Engineering (SAICE) Regional Awards and was nominated for the SAICE National Awards, while in 2020 she was announced as the winner in Accenture’s Rising Star Awards in the Construction and Industrial category.

M&G YOUNG SOUTH AFRICANS

Every year, Witsies are among those recognised for their extraordinary work. Over 40 eminent Witsies were featured in the 2021 Mail & Guardian Top 200 list of young South Africans. The Top 200 List is in its 15th year of showcasing South Africa’s outstanding and accomplished young people in various fields including education, entertainment, film and media, business and entrepreneurship, justice and law, health, mining and manufacturing, science and technology, tourism and hospitality, rural development projects, civil society, and politics and government. This year, the list also featured a special category, COVID-19 frontliners.

Dr Keneiloe Molopyane

YOUNG TRAILBLAZERS LEAD THE WAY

• Archaeologist and biological anthropologist, Dr Keneiloe Molopyane, who completed her PhD in biological anthropology in 2020, was recognised as a trailblazer by the prestigious National Geographic Society. She is part of the select 15 “global changemakers” in the 2021 class of Emerging Explorers.

Dr Molopyane, also know as “Bones” has an MSc in bioarchaeology from the University of York and is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Centre for Exploration of the Deep Human Journey at Wits.

In 2018 she accepted the challenge as second generation “underground astronaut”. Following a successful expedition into the Dinaledi and Lesedi chambersof the Rising Star Cave system in 2019 – she was named the curator of the Maropeng and Sterkfontein Caves Visitor Centre at the Cradle of Humankind. She leads a team exploring a new cave known as UW 105.

Dr Molopyane is featured in the SuperScientist cards series – developed to inspire a younger generation to see themselves in the faces of working scientists. It is a project of the South African non-profit CodeMakers. Other Witsies featured in the SuperScientist card series are Kimberleigh Tommy (BSc 2015, BSc Hons 2016, MSc 2018) and Professor Penny Moore (BSc 1996, BSc Hons 1997, MSc 2000).

Kimberleigh Tommy's SuperScientist card.

• Prinavan Pillay (BEngSc, BME 2014, BSc Eng 2015) was selected as one of the 30 2021 Global Future Leaders under 30 by Corinium Global Intelligence. He is an entrepreneur, tech enthusiast and proponent of digital transformation. He has a master’s degree in machine learning, a bachelor’s in electrical engineering and a bachelor’s in biomedical engineering and is co-founder and chief technology officer at Teraflow.ai, an artificial intelligence consultancy focused on machine learning and data-driven solutions for global enterprises. His diverse technical background, coupled with firm startup experience in the data sphere, helps empower other startups, businesses and academia with the tools and expertise to scale their products and ideas.

Prinavan Pillay