The Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) has earned R21 million in royalty and licence revenue for its technology products for the past year - exceeding its target of R7.9 million.
The council, in its 2008/9 annual report, states that the R12 million increase was a result of novel developments in areas such as health, defence, IT and the energy environment.
“This was an objective we pursued intently since an organisational reconfiguration in 2005. One component of that process was ensuring a core focus on quality R&D, but not ignoring that similar discipline and quality was expected of its operational and financial workings - underpinned by good governance,” says CEO of the CSIR, Sibusiso Sibisi.
The council, which also received an unqualified audit, revealed it was granted 35 new technology patents in 2008. Income from research and development contracts increased from R373.5 million in 2007/8 to R450 million in 2008/9. While IT was not a critical sector, its importance was growing as it could be applied across all industries, the report noted.
Security successes
The CSIR established its biometrics research capacity in 2008 and says preliminary tests of the products have shown “excellent results”.
“To improve SA's capacity to develop local biometric products and curb the outsourcing of national security safeguards, the CSIR has successfully developed a fingerprint recognition platform that can perform one-to-one verification and one-to-many verification,” the report states.
The CSIR says a more rigorous reliability-testing regime is being implemented and the system will be packaged into a technology demonstrator. This will be followed by the development of various related biometric-based technologies and applications for technology transfer and commercialisation.
Connecting centres
The CSIR says it is happy with the progress of its South African National Research and Education Network (Sanren). Network design and the master plan for the network was completed in 2008. The network aims to provide researchers with access to a high-speed, low-cost and dedicated research network.
“Early successes for Sanren were the first four research sites to go live in Johannesburg, namely the main campuses of the University of the Witwatersrand, the University of Johannesburg and two of its satellite campuses. The main focus for 2009/10 will be to establish the national network and to roll out Sanren in the Cape Town, Tshwane and Ethekwini metros,” the report states.
The network will connect 10Gbit/s rings in major metros linked to each other by a 10Gbit/s national backbone. Individual institutions will be linked to the metro rings. Beneficiaries of the network will include the CSIR, Mintek, the Human Sciences Research Council and the Karoo Array Telescope project, which will help deliver on the requirements for the Square Kilometre Array bid.
Software shifts
In the past financial year, the implementation of open source software (OSS) as the basis of CSIR computing has resulted in 18% of the organisation's staff migrating to open source.
“A culture of training in terms of optimal use of OSS has been entrenched, and the CSIR has established a research group focused on developing a Linux desktop dedicated to scientific computing to support affordable and flexible scientific infrastructure in Africa and further afield,” the report reveals.
The CSIR also states it has initiated internships to advance skills in software development. The programmes would be run in partnership with the Department of Science and Technology and the State IT Agency.
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