Staff

Juliet Hermes

 

Lara Atkinson

 

Thomas Mtontsi

Education Officer at Egagasini Thomas pursued science education and has since taught sciences at high school. As part of his experience, he has worked in Marine Science Education for ten years. Thomas currently coordinates the SAEON Egagasini Node Education Programme. The node supports five schools in the Western Cape’s Cape Town Metro Region. The schools are either in fishing communities or in areas of abject poverty. Houtbay Secondary in Houtbay, Ocean View Secondary in Ocean View, Masiphumelele in Fish Hoek, Sophumelela in Samora Machel Phillipi, and Usasazo secondary in Khayelitsha. The objective of the programme is to support the development of science skills using a marine science context, encourage an interest and awareness in ocean sciences. The Node supports the school through school based monitoring programme: Argo Floats Education Project and Adopt a Drifter Programme (with NOAA). In each school a monitoring team (a group of fifteen learners and a teacher) is established to track changes at sea. Further support include Educator Workshops where teachers are trained to integrate ocean science in the curriculum through the Argo Floats Education Project.

Shari Solomons

Shari has more than 6 years experience as an administrator, managing projects, budgets and over seeing management duties . Shari, completed her office Administration Diploma at Varsity College in 2009 and currently busy with CPUT, doing a Supplier Chain Management course and thereafter starting a Project Management course. She provides support to interns, students, scientist, education officer, I.T and management team . Shari, has also been appointed the secretarial role for the Southern African Data Centre for Oceanography (SADCO). Over the past year being with the Egagasini node Shari developed much interest in Marine Science and Oceanography.

Tamaryn Morris

Agulhas System Climate Array (ASCA) Coordinator at the Egagasini Node. In this role, Tammy is overseeing the implementation of the ASCA deep-sea mooring deployments off the east coast of South Africa into the Agulhas Current for the duration of the project (2015 – 2019). Tammy is also the representative for South Africa on the Argo Steering Team and is working towards increasing Argo deployments in the oceans around South Africa, while raising awareness of the Argo program through capacity development at both secondary and tertiary level education. Tammy completed her MTech in Physical Oceanography at CPUTin 2009 and is currently working towards her PhD in Physical Oceanography at UCT. Her research topics looks at resolving mesoscale eddy dynamics of the southern Mozambique Channel using Argo float technology. Tammy’s research interests include mesoscale eddies, Agulhas Current, oceanographic instrumentation (both in situ and autonomous) and deep ocean mooring arrays. Tammy also supervises CPUT technical students at National Diploma and BTech level, and lectures for CPUT and UCT. She is also involved with the OceanTeacher Global Academy in Oostende, Belgium and its Regional Training Centre in Grahamstown, developing courses and training young researchers in marine science topics (most notably Oceanographic Instrumentation).