Chemistry, Engineering, Geomorphology

Dr Tokoloho Rampai, Senior Lecturer at the University of Cape Town (UCT)

Dr Tokoloho Rampai is a Senior lecturer in the Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Cape Town (UCT). She has 15 years of collective experience in academia and research. She is one of the founding members of the UCT Marine and Antarctic Research centre for Innovation and Sustainability (MARIS), which is a large cross faculty multi-disciplinary research centre. Within this MARIS, she manages the portfolio of Innovation in Chemical, Materials and Observational Engineering disciple in the Scientific Steering Committee in addition to being director of MARIS@CHE.

Her research focus is mainly Materials Engineering, this is applied both in Antarctic sea ice research and advanced ceramic materials development for application in catalytic processes. Under the advanced ceramics research, she focuses on powder metallurgy, thermodynamics for materials development, material properties evaluation and tribological testing for suitability of application. And under the sea ice research; she focuses on improving the understanding of the dynamics of sea ice growth and how these give rise to the material properties (microstructure and mechanics) of Antarctic Sea ice. This is predominately carried out through artificial sea ice growth experiments in temperature-controlled laboratory conditions and nominally through field testing in the Marginal Ice Zone in the Southern Ocean.

She is an active supervisor of postgraduate students and has published in sea ice, engineering, and ceramics development journals. In 2021 she joined the Association of Polar Early Career Scientists in South Africa (APECS SA) where she conceptualised, initiated, and managed the mentorship portfolio which was successfully transferred to SAPRI in 2023 as a national initiative. And in 2024 was nominated to becoming a member of South African National Committee for the Scientific Committee for Antarctic Research (SANC for SCAR). Within this committee she is co-manager of the Physical Sciences group and Instabilities & Thresholds in Antarctica (INSTANT) portfolio.

Dr Tokoloho Rampai also enjoys the ocean and remote areas.