Summa Cum Laude MSc Graduate Earns Coveted Award

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Mr Chinedu Izuchukwu has his eyes set on solving South Africa’s industrial problems – and with a summa cum laude MSc in Mathematics to his name as well as the coveted S₂A₃ Medal for the best Masters dissertation across the sciences and applied sciences at UKZN, watch this space!

The South African Association for the Advancement of Science awards one medal to each university in South Africa annually for the single best Masters dissertation across all the sciences and applied sciences at the institution.

Izuchukwu, who completed his undergraduate studies at the Ebonyi State University in Nigeria, pursued postgraduate studies at UKZN thanks to a 2016 travel grant from the National Mathematical Centre (NMC) in Abuja.

He chose to study at UKZN because of its status as one of the most productive research institutions in Africa and the availability of the necessary research facilities at the Institution.

Izuchukwu’s area of speciality is nonlinear analysis, in particular fixed point theory and its applications. His MSc research was titled: Iterative Algorithms for Approximating Solutions of Variational Inequality Problems and Monotone Inclusion Problems.

‘My research was aimed at developing different algorithms for providing solutions to optimisation problems emanating from industries and firms, since most industrial problems can be modelled as optimisation problems,’ he said.

Izuchukwu pursued this study to make effective contributions towards the growth of industries in Africa. He is continuing his PhD studies at UKZN under the supervision of Dr Oluwatosin Mewomo who also supervised his Masters research and whom he thanked for his sincere and thorough supervision.

Words by: Christine Cuénod

Photograph by: Abhi Indrarajan