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Two South Africans awarded IFIP Fellowship status


Johannesburg, 13 Nov 2020
Prof Judith Bishop, computer scientist and author
Prof Judith Bishop, computer scientist and author

South African Professors Judith Bishop and Paula Kotzé have been bestowed the prestigious International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) Fellow Award at the recent IFIP General Assembly. IFIP is an international body in the field of IT, and the Institute for Information Technology Professionals South Africa (IITPSA) is the South Africa country member of IFIP.

The title of IFIP Fellow is the most prestigious IFIP technical distinction, which is conferred in recognition of outstanding and enduring contributions to the ICT industry, in the role of a technical leader, scientist, engineer or educator.

IITPSA CEO Tony Parry noted that the award was a relatively new honour, conferred on very few people around the world. “We are therefore very proud to see IFIP Fellow Awards conferred on these leading ICT professionals and academics from South Africa,” he said.

“Congratulations to these two worthy recipients. We are indeed proud of you,” said Prof Rossouw von Solms, former national representative to IFIP and Emeritus Professor at the Centre for Research in Information and Cyber Security at the Nelson Mandela University School of ICT.

Prof Judith Bishop is a computer scientist and author whose career spans industry and academia. At Microsoft Research, she co-ordinated cross-group projects, empowering teams to produce high quality products. As a professor, she was recognised as an innovator who increased the adoption of new programming languages globally from Pascal to Ada to Java via her 17 books. 

Prof Paula Kotzé, an internationally acclaimed researcher and educator with significant achievements in the fields of human-computer interaction.
Prof Paula Kotzé, an internationally acclaimed researcher and educator with significant achievements in the fields of human-computer interaction.

After studying in South Africa, Bishop received her PhD from the University of Southampton, UK. She worked at Wits, UP and Southampton and is now an Extraordinary Professor at Stellenbosch University. Bishop is a Fellow of IITPSA, an ACM Distinguished Member, and has received the IFIP Silver Core Award.

Prof Paula Kotzé is an internationally acclaimed researcher and educator with significant achievements in the fields of human-computer interaction, human factors engineering and enterprise systems engineering. She holds a PhD in Computer Science with specialisation in Human-Computer Interaction from the University of York (UK), which she obtained in 1997.

After an academic career spanning 30 years, including in several senior management positions, she spent the past 10 years before her retirement in 2018 at the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) in South Africa, where she was Chief Researcher at the Meraka Institute. She is currently Extraordinary Professor in the Department of Informatics at the University of Pretoria.

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Leigh Angelo or Kabelo Phalane
ITP Communications
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leigh@tradeprojects.co.za