To a few of his former college students, Professor Barry Dwolatzky was the “Grand Geek” – a reputation of which he was very proud. However Barry, who handed away in Johannesburg, South Africa on 16 Might 2023, was rather more than a pc geek. He was additionally a frontrunner and a visionary within the subject of software program engineering in South Africa.
On the time of his passing he was 71 years outdated. He was by then retired from academia and held the title of Emeritus Professor on the College of the Witwatersrand (Wits), the place he spent a lot of his profession.
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However he didn’t actually decelerate: he remained the director of the Joburg Centre for Software program Engineering (JCSE), a job he’d held since 2007. Throughout the COVID lockdown in 2020, he began a podcast referred to as Optimizing – Main Africa’s Digital Future and produced eight episodes. He additionally wrote an autobiography referred to as Coded Historical past – My Lifetime of New Beginnings, which was launched in November 2022.
A pioneer in programming
An alumnus of the Faculty of Electrical and Data Engineering at Wits College, Barry graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering in 1975. He then began a grasp’s diploma, which he transformed to a PhD. After acquiring his PhD in 1979, he did post-doctoral analysis on the College of Manchester’s Institute of Science and Know-how and at Imperial Faculty in London. Thereafter, he labored as a senior analysis affiliate on the GEC-Marconi Centre within the UK.
I first met Barry in 1989 when he returned to South Africa as a senior lecturer within the Faculty of Electrical Engineering at Wits. I used to be an undergraduate in his class that 12 months. Once I returned to Wits in 1998, he was my MSc supervisor and, after I was appointed as a lecturer within the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, we had been colleagues and associates.
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When he joined the Faculty, there was just one programming course, Engineering Utilized Computing, taught to second-year electrical, civil and mechanical engineering college students. Barry recognized the rising significance of programming and data know-how in engineering fields earlier than anybody else in South Africa actually had. In the present day, the Faculty of Electrical & Data Engineering’s curriculum incorporates two second-year programming programs and a third-year course that’s obligatory for all electrical and data engineering college students. Barry was instrumental in introducing all these programs.
He was additionally the driving drive behind the varsity’s title change: “Data Engineering” was added within the 12 months 2000 with the introduction of a software program stream that will be distinct from {the electrical} engineering stream.
The thought didn’t come from the blue. Speaking to folks in varied corporations, Barry realised that a lot of the college’s graduates went into the data and communications know-how (ICT) sector slightly than into the classical electrical engineering fields like electrical technology, transmission and distribution, excessive voltage engineering and management engineering.
That’s what prompted the event and introduction of the software program stream. At the moment, computer systems had been changing into extra frequent in lots of industries and the cell phone sector was beginning to take off.
Software program to drive improvement
Within the late Eighties, the then CEO of Eskom, South Africa’s nationwide electrical energy utility, introduced a mass roll-out of electrification referred to as Electrical energy for All. Between 1990 and 2000, about 2.5 million homes had been related to the nationwide grid. At the moment, Barry began engaged on a software program programme that will help engineers in planning the electrification of townships, traditionally black city residential areas.
Various postgraduate college students beneath his supervision labored on facets of this software program. He referred to as this system CART (Pc-Aided Reticulation of Townships). In 1997, he took a year-long sabbatical and labored full time on CART, creating it right into a viable business product that was used to assist within the design of the electrification of many townships.
In 2005, Barry launched the Joburg Centre for Software program Engineering. He turned its director in 2007. It was the work he did by the centre that established him as an vital thought chief within the software program and IT area. Amongst different issues, the centre hosted masterclasses with world famend software program specialists.
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Innovation champion in software program engineering
In 2012, Barry recognized some outdated buildings owned by Wits College in Braamfontein, a high-rise downtown space of Johannesburg, as a perfect web site for an innovation hub. Many individuals communicate fondly of how Barry took them right into a derelict disco with solely the sunshine from his cell phone and enthusiastically defined how this was going to be a tech co-working area. He raised funding and reworked the rundown buildings into the innovation hub that’s as we speak one of many college’s flagship initiatives.
It’s referred to as the Tshimologong Digital Innovation Precinct. Tshimologong (a seTswana phrase for “place of recent beginnings”) offers an area for digital start-ups, in addition to coaching in digital applied sciences, and is used as a co-working area. Barry was Tshimologong’s first director and was honoured for this visionary venture with the Vice Chancellor’s Award for Analysis and Instructing in 2016.
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Even after retiring, Barry remained dedicated to and pushed by the thought of innovation. He labored alongside Wits College’s deputy vice-chancellor, Professor Lynn Morris, to ascertain the Wits Innovation Centre. It was launched on 17 April 2023.
Estelle Trengove Affiliate professor in electrical engineering, College of the Witwatersrand
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