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Feb 11, 2020 | 23:47 pm
Armando D. Ngojo is an Engineering Institute of Technology graduate who recently completed our 52705WA - Advanced Diploma of Biomedical Engineering. Currently working in the healthcare engineering industry for a company that maintains and manages medical equipment, Armando has spent fifteen years in the technological side of the medical industry. However, Armando’s interest in engineering began at a young age. “When I was younger, I was very fascinated with the functionality of the transistor radio. I opened it up and saw a lot of small things and components which fired up my curiosity. I was amazed at how a television worked. How a refrigerator cooled the items inside of it intrigued me.”In his secondary school years, he pursued his love for technology further by enrolling in an elective that covered electricity & electronics. After high school, he began to pursue a career in Electronics Engineering. However, Armando’s road to an[…]
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Feb 11, 2020 | 03:15 am
Islam Sarwat graduated from EIT in 2015 with a 52742WA - Advanced Diploma of Plant Engineering. Before completing the program, he was an in-training operation and mechanical engineer. He noticed that he had some spare time on his hands and a dream to attain a senior engineering job in the future.Islam chose this particular program because, he says, it was comprehensive and covered a lot of material that would improve his knowledge and enhance his skills. He also knew it would help him find direction in his career.“My studies helped orient me in choosing which engineering industry to go into. The engineering industry has a lot of different varieties and disciplines. Instead of one particular field, it includes many different fields.”Islam found that the pathways to being hired in a high-level job became more likely after completing the plant engineering program.“Life was better. I felt that I did what should[…]
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Feb 10, 2020 | 23:57 pm
Legal Wise, a law institute in South Africa, defines retrenchment quite aptly, “Retrenchment is a form of dismissal due to no fault of the employee, it is a process whereby the employer reviews its business needs in order to increase profits or limit losses, which leads to reducing its employees.”In some instances, automation has meant that some jobs no longer require human intervention. For example, in the banking sector, many physical branches have closed down or downsized as Internet banking takes over.In the engineering world, mining companies have also been badly hit. For example, in September 2019, mining conglomerate Sibanye-Stillwater indicated that 5,270 jobs (or roughly 6% of their workforce) would have to be cut after financial losses at their mines. In 2017, Platinum producer Lonmin announced that it would lay off 12,600 workers over three years.However, while some jobs are no longer as in-demand as they once were, advances[…]
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Feb 10, 2020 | 06:47 am
Lucinda Krige is a South African inspiration. She is a qualified Marine Engineer Officer who, since 2003, has been working for renowned seafood processing company Sea Harvest. She currently works as a HR Business Partner in Learning and Development at Sea Harvest.She was the first woman to qualify as a Chief Engineer in the fishing industry in South Africa. The sector produces 80 million tons of food and employs 40 million people across the globe.Sea Harvest is a company that was established in 1964 on the Atlantic West Coast of South Africa. They are headquartered in Saldanha in the Western Cape. They catch and package seafood, exporting it to 22 countries.Lucinda, being the first female engineering cadet in the fisheries industry to rise up the ranks to become a Chief Engineer, is a role model to the many unemployed youths in South Africa who are desperately seeking the kinds of[…]
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Feb 6, 2020 | 01:36 am
While the Engineering Institute of Technology has campuses in Perth, Western Australia, and Melbourne, Victoria, we predominantly run as an online institute that sees thousands of students logging in and out every day. For students who are part of our online learning cohort, internet connectivity is imperative.We are proud to have students from all over the world who have earned Australian accredited diplomas and degrees through our unique online delivery model. We are, however, aware of the challenges many countries face with limited internet connectivity.According to Internet World Stats, there are 525,148,631 internet users in Africa. The continent’s population is said to be 1.216 billion people, according to estimates compiled in 2016. About 690 million people are, therefore, without access to life-changing internet technologies.In 2017, the United Nations (UN) reported that more than half of the world’s population still does not have access to the internet, with Asia and Africa[…]
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Feb 5, 2020 | 00:48 am
Transformative technologies demand flexibility in the modern era. Consumers demand that technologies be smaller, thinner, wearable, fireproof, bendable, etcetera. On top of all that, the battery still needs to hold a charge.In Busan, South Korea, a company named Jenax has been hard at work at revolutionizing the lithium-ion battery. They are ensuring a battery can scrunch, bend, flex, and more. The battery is called the J-Flex. And it looks like this:Source: JenaxJenax says they have batteries as small as 0.5 millimeters that could power sensors, with their biggest battery being a 200mm by 200mm battery. The company says after 1,000 charge-discharge cycles, the cells retain 90% of their capacity.Creating ultra-flexible batteries that can twist and turn increases the chances of flammability. Lithium-ion batteries are prevalent in many of the technologies that we plug-in to charge every day. Most notably, our smartphones, smartwatches, and tablets.Jenax has created a non-flammable liquid electrolyte[…]
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Feb 5, 2020 | 00:35 am
South Africa needs more medium-skilled workers. The youth graduate unemployment rate in the first quarter of 2019, according to Stats South Africa, was 31 percent. The hope is that the first quarter of 2020 may see improvement.The Minister of Higher Education, Science and Technology, Blade Nzimande, is encouraging matriculants who just received their results in January to consider enrolling in Technical Vocational Educational and Training (TVET) colleges.He said most students aim straight for university after completing the twelfth grade, “TVET colleges play a pivotal role in addressing South Africa’s skills needs and cater for a wide spectrum.”Blulever Education, a new South African higher education group, reports that there is a shortfall of 40,000 people in the artisanal space in the country. The situation is further worsened with unqualified artisans purportedly flooding the market. In their latest report on the sector, they write, “We found that this is a system with pockets[…]
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Feb 4, 2020 | 06:12 am
Australia’s fire season has been the most damaging in living memory. The skies have been tinged red by the earth-scorching fires that have burned up about 12 million acres of land in Australia. The bushfires, which are usually observed between October to March, have been raging since September 2019. They are the worst in the country’s history. Each state has been affected in a variety of ways, but it is New South Wales and Victoria that have been most severely hit by the fires. As Australia picks up the pieces, while still blazing fires as temperatures soar, engineers are both assisting where they can and wondering how to prevent another disaster like this in the future. Each engineer in every engineering discipline could use their technical studies to the country’s benefit to mitigate future fire events. Back in 2016, a Research Scientist at IBM, Anna Phan, asked the question: Can[…]
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Jan 29, 2020 | 01:43 am
Sefiwa Monyamane is an engineering professional and Engineering Institute of Technology graduate from Botswana. Currently working at a state-run electricity utility company, Botswana Power Corporation, Sefiwa is a scholar of the world of electrical engineering. But why did he choose the world of electrical engineering and more specifically, EIT?“New inventions are ever-changing in complexity, especially in power utilities. As an innovative individual, I thought this was the right course and the right field to express my interest in the technologies of the industry.”Sefiwa first began to pursue a career in electrical engineering many years ago. He attended Shashe River School between 1999 and 2000. There he received his Botswana General Certificate of Secondary Education (BGCSE) in Physical Sciences. Soon after, he enrolled for a Diploma in Electronics and Electrical Engineering at the University of Botswana, receiving his diploma in 2003. In 2005, he went on to work in Broadcasting Services as[…]
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Jan 28, 2020 | 06:13 am
Dear ColleaguesThe debate is now moving to whether the current coronavirus (as I write this, more than a hundred people have died) is more virulent than the earlier SARS virus with suggestions that it is even spreading before symptoms are evident. Some comparisons are also being made about the influenza pandemic in 1918 when between 20 and 40 million died near the end of World War I. (More people died in a single year here than in the horrendous Black Death Bubonic Plague from 1347 to 1351).And we have Cyber Viruses of courseNaturally, there are a plethora of millions of cyber viruses being spread on a second-by-second basis through the internet. These are absolutely horrendously destructive to electronic media and have been known to shatter longstanding businesses and careers. But fortunately, with training and varied isolation techniques combined with a dose of common sense and pro-activeness, they can be kept[…]
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Jan 24, 2020 | 07:43 am
Ijaz Ali is a graduate of the Engineering Institute of Technology based in the United Arab Emirates. He completed his 52724WA - Advanced Diploma of Civil and Structural Engineering in March 2019. He has recently embarked on his journey of acquiring a Bachelor of Science (Civil and Structural Engineering) with EIT.He chose to study these qualifications because of the industry he works in; he works in the field of Transportation Engineering, which is a subcategory of Civil Engineering.To get to where he is today, he started his journey in 2007 when he did a CAD certificate and worked with an Engineering Consulting office. His affinity for engineering in his day to day work is apparent.“I chose this field as I was fascinated by how easily and systematically one can solve complex issues through engineering. It is a very well-structured field with proper procedures and standards that govern it, and this[…]
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Jan 24, 2020 | 07:09 am
Autonomous and efficient data-collecting systems will continue to revolutionize engineering industries throughout 2020. The development of these cyber-physical systems is what is enabling the data and sensor-driven efficiency of the fourth industrial revolution forward. The most cutting-edge of industrial setups in the world are combining cyber-physical systems with large amounts of data, paired with machine learning, in one big interconnected network. This means factories can run with almost no human interference. Jon Excell, the Editor of The Engineer Magazine, ended his first Editor’s Note of the January 2020 edition by highlighting how engineering innovation and data generation is transforming a plethora of industries.“Few areas of industrial endeavor are untouched by digitalization...engineering innovation - whether it’s destined for the high seas, the operating theatre or the farmer’s field - is increasingly reliant on the intelligent use of data,” he wrote.“And, as we look further ahead, the degree to which this drives[…]
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Jan 13, 2020 | 07:31 am
Ryan Smith is an Engineering Institute of Technology graduate who earned his 52705WA - Advanced Diploma of Biomedical Engineering in 2018. First working in the audio engineering industry, Ryan now works for an American multinational conglomerate in the healthcare industry. His engineering journey proves that, regardless of the discipline, you can go cross-disciplinary based on your passion for technology alone.After completing a Diploma in Audio Engineering in 2011, Ryan spent six years in the professional audio industry. However, Ryan always had a predisposition to technology, and this keen interest led him to apply for an apprenticeship in electronics.From that apprenticeship, Ryan was granted a trade qualification in Electronics and Communications. Now equipped with expanded electronic knowledge, he found employment within the biomedical industry. His work now saw him repairing, maintaining, and installing medical equipment. Answering why he chose the engineering industry, Ryan said, “I pursued a career in the engineering[…]
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Jan 10, 2020 | 00:10 am
Tesla has officially announced that its lithium-ion home batteries, named the Powerwall, will be available in South Africa in 2020.They have sent surveys to prospective South African customers inquiring about their home energy usage.The questions the company put to the eager respondents were: Do you have a Solar PV system currently installed at this property? Do you own this property? When would you like the installation to occur? (Within six months or 6-12 months) Why do you want to install Powerwall or Solar Panels?Image By Raysonho @ Open Grid Scheduler / Grid EngineTesla will send this feedback to a Certified Third Party Installer company who will make contact with the customer. This means there are companies with electrical engineers in South Africa, who are ready to install the solar panel arrays and the Powerwall.Therefore, future electrical engineers in South Africa should be learning the tools of the renewables trade so[…]
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Jan 8, 2020 | 01:52 am
Air travel is a major contributor to CO2 emissions and is attracting the ire of environmentalist movements who are campaigning for the industry to look to alternative methods of powering aircraft.Airbus is looking to nature for inspiration to minimize the carbon footprint their planes create around the world. They are suggesting that planes could fly in V-shape formations — as seen by geese migrations in the animal kingdom — to save fuel and lower emissions.In the first six months of 2020, Airbus hopes to test the flying formations with two A320 planes. The planes will fly a predetermined route in a configuration that will test the aircraft’s ability to utilize what is known as ‘wake energy retrieval.’On their website, Airbus writes, “Just like birds, every aircraft creates a wake while flying. Flying together could thus help aircraft to retrieve the lost kinetic energy by positioning a follower aircraft in the[…]
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Armando D. Ngojo is an Engineering Institute of Technology graduate who recently completed our 52705WA - Advanced Diploma of Biomedical Engineering. Currently working in the healthcare engineering industry for a company that maintains and manages medical equipment, Armando has spent[…]
Islam Sarwat graduated from EIT in 2015 with a 52742WA - Advanced Diploma of Plant Engineering. Before completing the program, he was an in-training operation and mechanical engineer. He noticed that he had some spare time on his hands and[…]
Legal Wise, a law institute in South Africa, defines retrenchment quite aptly, “Retrenchment is a form of dismissal due to no fault of the employee, it is a process whereby the employer reviews its business needs in order to increase[…]
Lucinda Krige is a South African inspiration. She is a qualified Marine Engineer Officer who, since 2003, has been working for renowned seafood processing company Sea Harvest. She currently works as a HR Business Partner in Learning and Development at[…]
While the Engineering Institute of Technology has campuses in Perth, Western Australia, and Melbourne, Victoria, we predominantly run as an online institute that sees thousands of students logging in and out every day. For students who are part of our[…]
Transformative technologies demand flexibility in the modern era. Consumers demand that technologies be smaller, thinner, wearable, fireproof, bendable, etcetera. On top of all that, the battery still needs to hold a charge.In Busan, South Korea, a company named Jenax has[…]
South Africa needs more medium-skilled workers. The youth graduate unemployment rate in the first quarter of 2019, according to Stats South Africa, was 31 percent. The hope is that the first quarter of 2020 may see improvement.The Minister of Higher[…]
Australia’s fire season has been the most damaging in living memory. The skies have been tinged red by the earth-scorching fires that have burned up about 12 million acres of land in Australia. The bushfires, which are usually observed between[…]
Sefiwa Monyamane is an engineering professional and Engineering Institute of Technology graduate from Botswana. Currently working at a state-run electricity utility company, Botswana Power Corporation, Sefiwa is a scholar of the world of electrical engineering. But why did he choose[…]
Dear ColleaguesThe debate is now moving to whether the current coronavirus (as I write this, more than a hundred people have died) is more virulent than the earlier SARS virus with suggestions that it is even spreading before symptoms are[…]
