In formulating sustainable solutions to address the complexity of the development needs that face southern Africa, the Centre for Land-Related, Regional and Development Law & Policy collaborates closely with government (at national, provincial and local level), regional and international organisations, tertiary and regulatory institutions, as well as with the private sector and the NGO community.

The National Tissue Bank of the University of Pretoria is an accredited human tissue bank devoted to providing quality musculoskeletal allografts that meet the need of surgeons to help their patients improve their quality of life. We are proud to announce that the National Tissue Bank has acquired an additional certification, ISO 13485:2003; a Quality Management Standard for Medical Devices. This is a standard within the ISO 9001:2000 Quality Management System, for which they obtained certification in 2005.

Compliance with ISO 13485:2003 testifies to the National Tissue Banks ability to provide tissue allograft, which is approved and accepted as a medical device, and to provide related services that consistently meet customer requirements. The certification warrants customer satisfaction and adherence to applicable local statutory and regulatory requirements specific to medical devices.

During October 2005, BE at UP and its sister company, Continuing Education at University of Pretoria (Pty) Ltd, representing the University of Pretoria, jointly tendered in a consortium partnership that also includes the University of Amsterdam and the University of Groningen, for undertaking a project entitled Strengthening Support Systems at Zambian Universities for Financing, Administration, Management and IFCT.

The University of Amsterdams Centre for International Cooperation, which is the primary partner in the consortium, notified us that the consortiums tender had been successful. The project will be executed over a three-year period.

BE at UP's marketing manager, Celia da Silva, and operations assistant, Thobi Selemela, together with our sister company Continuing Education at University of Pretoria (Pty) Ltd, exhibited at the 4th Annual Tshwane Business Week Conference, held in May this year. They joined representatives from business sectors, including NGOs and science councils, at the South African Reserve Bank in Pretoria. The focus of the conference was on Progressing City Development through Smart Partnerships.

Lourens Uitenweerde, photographer from Eyescape Studio, received a gold award in the Fujifilm Photographic Awards for 2006 in the Industrial category for the photograph of the Universitys Compact Antenna Test Range at the Department of Electrical, Electronic & Computer Engineering.

This picture was featured in our 2005 Annual Report.

BE at UP, in collaboration with Dr Pieter Schaap from the Department of Human Resource Management at the University of Pretoria, exhibited at the SIOPSA Conference at the CSIR, 89 June 2006.

The conference was attended by an estimated 500 industrial psychologists. As the sole distributor of Skillcheck skills and work-sample assessment products in South Africa, BE at UP promoted the Skillcheck product.

For more information about Skillcheck, visit the service offering section of our website.

Download an article by Prof. Anastassios Pouris, Director of the Institute for Technological Innovation (Faculty of Engineering, University of Pretoria), reporting on the results of a venture to develop indicators of research performance and quality as tools for creating research policy for universities and for assessing the performance of the University of Pretoria.

This article was published in the South African Journal of Science. You can download the document as a Pdf here.