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Our World at Risk
Climate Change
Professor Bruce Hewitson heads the Climate Systems
Analysis Group focusing on climate modelling,
variability, change, and regional projections. He is
extensively engaged with capacity-building in Africa
and with the communication of regional climate
information supporting responses to climate change.
He plays numerous roles internationally, including that of
co-ordinating lead author in the Intergovernmental Panel
on Climate Change (IPCC), and currently co-chairs both
the IPCC Task Group on Scenarios for Climate and Impact
Assessment and the World Climate Research Programme
(WCRP) working group on regional climates. He is a lead
co-ordinator in the WCRP global Coordinated Regional
Climate Downscaling Experiment programme to develop
regional climate projections.
Animal Evolution and
Systematics
Professor David Jacobs holds a PhD in Zoology from
the University of Hawaii, where he completed a thesis
titled “Character release in the endangered Hawaiian
hoary bat, Lasiurus cinereus semotus”. He has been
at the University of Cape Town since 1994, where his
main research interests are focused on all aspects of
evolutionary biology. He has conducted research all
around the world, including Australia, Costa Rica, Belize,
Israel, Canada, Namibia, and Zambia. He has supervised
more than 20 postgraduate degrees and many of his
students have won prestigious awards such as the
Purcell Memorial Award for the best PhD thesis and the
SA Association for the Advancement of Science – S2A3
Bronze Medal for the best master’s degree thesis.
Stable Isotopes, Archaeology
and Palaeoenvironmental Science
Judith Sealy is Professor of Archaeology and the former
head of the Department of Archaeology at UCT. She also
heads UCT’s Stable Light Isotope Laboratory, a major
facility housing analytical equipment. Professor Sealy
obtained her PhD from UCT in 1989 for her thesis entitled
“Reconstruction of Later Stone Age diets in the south-
western Cape, South Africa: evaluation and application
of five isotopic and trace element techniques”. Her
main research interests include the development and
application of stable-isotope techniques for dietary
reconstruction, hunter-gatherer archaeology across the
period from the emergence of modern humans to the
recent past, and the beginnings of food production in
Africa. She has published more than 75 peer-reviewed
journal articles and book chapters, including articles in
Nature
and
Science
.
Ocean Climate Modelling
The focus of this SARChI Chair (previously held by
Professor George Philander) is multi-disciplinary and
it is well poised to build research capacity in ocean-
atmosphere studies, particularly with regard to satellite
remote sensing of the oceans, numerical modelling,
data assimilation, and forecasting of the coupled ocean-
atmosphere ecosystem. The Chair will enable us to
better understand and model the properties of the
oceans around Southern Africa and its impact on climate
change not only regionally but globally as well.
DST/NRF SARChI Chairs
associated with this theme
Professor Bruce Hewitson
Professor David Jacobs
Professor Judith Sealy