Director of Hasso-Plattner-Institut chairs SAP Meraka UTD advisory board

The election of Professor Christof Meinel, president, scientific director, and CEO of Germany's Hasso-Plattner-Institut (HPI) for IT Systems Engineering, as chairman of the advisory board of the SAP Meraka UTD will reinforce the international credibility of the UTD.

So says Danie Kok, director of the SAP Research CEC Pretoria, the only one of the research centres set up around the world by business software giant, SAP AG, to be established in Africa.

In 2007, the CEC joined with the CSIR's Meraka Institute - whose major objective is to promote national economic and social development through human capital development and needs-based research and innovation in the ICT sector - in setting up the SAP Meraka Unit for Technology Development (UTD).

"The objectives of the UTD are to find ways in which ICT can be applied to foster growth and development among very small enterprises," Kok says. "In the process, it will help to develop a critical mass of local research capability, particularly among graduate and post-graduate students from previously disadvantaged communities.

"However, to be able to attract the right research skills as well as funding and project partners from industry and commerce, the UTD needs to be able to guarantee that its research will be carried out to international standards.

"Having a man of Professor Meinel's international experience and standing chair our advisory board gives all our stakeholders the confidence that we are serious about reaching and maintaining those standards."

In addition to his responsibilities at the HPI, which is a university institute - privately financed by Hasso Plattner, one of the founders of SAP, and offering bachelor, masters and PhD courses in IT-systems engineering, Professor Meinel is professor of computer sciences at the University of Potsdam, Germany, with a chair on Internet Technology and Systems.

His research focuses in the areas of Internet and information security, semantic and social Web, and e-learning and Web university. He also teaches at the HPI school of design thinking and is visiting professor at Luxembourg International Advanced Studies in Information Technology as well as the University of Luxembourg and the College of Computer Science of Beijing University of Technology, China.

"The responsibility of an advisory board for a new research organisation is to help it get into context with other, similar organisations," Meinel says. "That entails helping it make contact with other organisations and researchers as well as guiding it into the correct understanding of the level of work it needs to do and positioning it to get appropriate external funding.

"In other words, it's the board's job to ensure that the UTD will become an internationally respected research institute."

Meinel himself will provide access for the UTD to the knowledge base of the HPI - which includes disciplines as diverse as computer graphics and process management - in addition to his own specialisations in distance education and security management driven by the Internet.

"It's important that, while it takes into account local circumstances, the UTD delivers results that can be universally applicable," Meinel says. "Because of globalisation, developing countries like Brazil, India, China, and South Africa are going to have an enormous influence on the world, both politically and economically.

"They're ideal places, therefore, to concentrate research on just how IT empowers growth and development. In this sense in particular, scientific research is one of the most powerful engines of social and economic development. I would like to see the UTD be one of the most influential."

The other members of the SAP Meraka UTD advisory board are Prof Lutz Heuser, vice-president of SAP Research and chief development architect, SAP AG; Dr Phil Mjwara, director general of South Africa's national department of science and technology; Professor Jos'e Luis Encarnac~ao, head of INI-GraphicsNet (International Network of Institutions for advanced education, training and research and development in computer graphics technology, systems and applications); Danie Kok, director SAP Research CEC Pretoria; Dr Joachim Schaper, vice-president Americas, SAP Research; Claas Keuhnemann, managing director of SAP South Africa; and Johan Eksteen, manager of the technology research programme at the CSIR (Meraka Institute).