The Advanced Materials Initiative (AMI) is expanding its area of interest to include all advanced materials, such as ceramics, composites and polymers/ plastics, as well as metals. (AMI originally stood for Advanced Metals Initiative.) This process started with renaming the initiative in early 2018, which was demonstrated by the incorporation of the ceramics, composites and polymers thematic areas in the 2018 annual Conference of the South African Advanced Materials Initiative (CoSAAMI 2018), hosted by the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) in Vanderbijlpark (at the Riverside Sun), in late October. CoSAAMI 2018 served as a peer review mechanism and a platform for researchers, students, academia and industry to present their work and for interaction in the latest trends in materials science.

Currently, the AMI is organised into four thematic networks. These are the Light Materials Development Network, the Ferrous Materials Development Network, the Nuclear Materials Development Network and the Precious Materials Development Network. These are coordinated by different science councils or State-owned entities. Light materials is coordinated by the CSIR, both ferrous and precious materials by minerals beneficiation science council Mintek and nuclear materials by the South African Nuclear Energy Corporation.

“Previously, we had overlooked plastics and ceramics,” notes CSIR Advanced Casting Technology Research group leader Dr Sagren Govender. But expanding the focus to include these other materials will require extra funding. Consequently, the widening of the focus cannot be done rapidly. “Because of the funding issue, we have to keep our primary focus on what we currently do to ensure we deliver on what has already been agreed,” he explains.

Nevertheless, the CoSAAMI 2019 conference, which will be hosted by Mintek in Gauteng province, while it will continue to focus on current materials research platforms, will also provide an opportunity for researchers working on other materials and manufacturing platforms to present and publish their work. It will take place in October.

In addition to expanding the materials covered, the AMI and the Department of Science and Technology (DST) also want to broaden the range of participants in the conference. “We want more industrial involvement in the conference,” he states. “We managed to get some industrial involvement in the 2018 conference. For future conferences, we are hoping to widen our sources of papers to include presentations from industry. These would not be peer- reviewed academic papers, but ‘abstracts’, as industry participants have no need for, or interest in, peer-reviewed publications, whereas these are essential for our academic participants.”

Increasing the participation of industry in the conference would also benefit postgraduate students. “Bringing in industry would emphasise to the postgrads that their research must be aimed at some practical application, and not be research for research’s sake,” points out Govender. “And it would also allow the postgrads to network with industry before they finish their research.”

The 2018 conference did enjoy significant support from industry. Companies that were particularly prominent were Hulamin (platinum sponsor), Isinzinda Aluminium (silver sponsor) and Weartech (an exhibitor). Other significant supporters were the DST, the CSIR and the National Metrology Institute of South Africa (gold sponsor). DST deputy director-general Imran Patel and CSIR CEO Dr Thulani Dlamini delivered addresses at the conference.

In addition to furthering local research into advanced materials, another key role of CoSAAMI is to serve as a peer research mechanism. Many postgraduate AMI students are required, as a condition of their funding, to submit papers to the conference; these papers are subjected to review by at least three experts in the relevant fields. This helps establish that the research standard in South Africa is at the desired high level and that it stays that way. “We require high-quality, international standard, peer-reviewed works,” affirms CSIR Powder Metallurgy Technologies senior researcher Dr Silethelwe Chikosa.

The proceedings of the 2018 conference have already been published by the Institute of Physics Publishing a subsidiary of the Institute of Physics, and is a society-owned scientific publisher. “They are competitive, they will only publish papers that have gone through a full, proper, high-quality peer review process, and they are open-access publishers – their volumes can be downloaded free,” she stresses.