Pretoria - The Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) says it will continue to champion the country’s footprint in groundbreaking research, development and innovation as it has done for the past seven decades.
Established in 1945, Africa’s leading research, development and innovation organisation will mark 76 years of existence later this year.
The CSIR, which pushed to be at the forefront during the country’s trying time with the advent of the Covid-19 pandemic, has vowed to continue dedicating its resources to improving the quality of life of South Africans.
Chairperson of the CSIR board, Professor Thokozani Majozi, detailed last year how the organisation had collaborated with local partners to produce ventilators for patients showing respiratory distress in the early phase of Covid-19 infection.
As of last year, 7 000 ventilators were completed and delivered to hospitals and clinics, with more than 18 000 Covid-19 tests conducted at an upgraded CSIR Biosafety Level 3 laboratory in a bid to boost the country’s testing capacity.
It has continued to move from strength to strength this year, and was certified as a top employer by the Top Employers Institute.
In a statement, the CSIR said being certified as a top employer showcased its dedication to a better world of work through excellent human resources policies and practices.
It has also taken the initiative to assist learners struggling with reading, through its voice computing research which adds and synchronizes human-narrated or computer-generated audio to text.
CSIR said its mandate has remained the guiding force over the years, with the focus refined to respond to the global and local context.
Its focus had also led to the spin-off of a number of institutions and the establishment of science councils, such as the South African Bureau of Standards, the National Research Foundation, the National Metrology Institute of South Africa, and the Human Sciences Research Council.
Some of the most impactful CSIR innovations and inventions throughout the decades include the first radar in South Africa in 1945.
“This was followed by the first microwave electronic distance measurement equipment, the tellurometer, created in 1954, as well as the contribution of CSIR research to the invention of the lithium-ion battery in the 1980s.
“Today, lithiumion batteries power our smartphones, laptop computers, electric vehicles, smart grids and even our homes, the agency said.
The CSIR’s impact has been experienced in diverse fields, as in 1999 its researchers developed a forecasting model to predict the outcome of the national elections based on early voting results.
The model has since been successfully used to predict the results for all the national and local government elections.
In 2010, the organisation unveiled its state-of-the-art containment Level 3 laboratory for experiments involving HIV and TB pathogens, which enabled researchers to conduct research and proof-of-concept studies for new diagnostics or therapeutics.
Pretoria News