General
69th Graduation’s Gatale Emerges as Only African Winner at World CUR 2019
Mr. Gatale Elijah who graduated with the Bachelor of Science of Computer Science during the second session of the 69th Graduation Ceremony of Makerere University has emerged as the only African winner at the recently concluded World Congress on Undergraduate Research 2019. The Second Edition of the World CUR was held from 23rd to 25th May 2019 at the Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg, Germany.
The aim of the Congress is to bring together the world's best undergraduate research and to work on some of the most significant challenges the global community is facing today. The World CUR 2019 featured six theme-based awards in the categories of; Environment, Global Health, Economy, Communication, Politics and The World We Create.
Mr. Gatale’s research project “Shuttle Alert” which addressed challenges that Makerere University students who reside in hostels face in their daily commute to the Main Campus won top honours in the Communication category. He received a manually crafted trophy and an official certificate. His undergraduate project "Shuttle Alert" was supervised by Dr. Marriette Katarahweire of the Department of Computer Science, College of Computing and Information Sciences (CoCIS). The Department is headed by Dr. Engineer Bainomugisha whose AirQo Project won a US$1.3million Google AI Impact Grant in May 2019.
Other winners were:
- For the research theme “Environment”: Kamilia Zubir and Asma Ahmed (Qatar University, Qatar) with the oral presentation “Antibacterial Activity of New Sponge Species Isolated from the Qatari Marine Zone”.
- For the research theme “Health”: Feres José Marón, et. Al (Universidad Nacional de Cuyo, Argentina) with the oral presentation “Nanoformulated Anadamide Decreases Blood Pressure, Neuroinflammatory and Oxidative Markers in a Rat Model of Hypertensive Disease”.
- For the research theme “Economy”: Anna-Lena Mauz, Joshua Senne, Maximilian Schambeck (University of Hohenheim, Germany) with the oral presentation “Earth‘s Treasures”.
- For the research theme “Politics”: Jamie Wise, Hollie Nyseth Brehm (Ohio State University, USA) with the poster presentation “Forgiveness after the Genocide in Rwanda: What Religious Narratives Reveal About Agency”.
- For the research theme “Create”: Saakshi Thukral, Katherine E. Savell (University of Alabama at Birmingham, US) with the poster presentation “Blunting Drug Related Gene Expression Changes Using a CRISPR/dCas9 Strategy”.
According to the Congress website, the prizes “have a fair value that encourages the individual development for subsequent research projects.”
We congratulate Mr. Gatale upon his excellent performance at the World CUR 2019 and for bringing great pride to his alma mater.
Please click the links below for more information
About Shuttle Alert: http://dissertations.mak.ac.ug/handle/20.500.12281/4367
About World CUR 2019: https://uol.de/en/worldcur2019
By Moses Lutaaya
The Directorate of Graduate Training (DGT) has in collaboration with Centre for Teaching and Learning completed the training of the first cohort of Graduate Supervisors.
Participants were academic staff from two colleges namely, College of Engineering, Art and Design (CEDAT) and the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences (CAES).
The three-day training that took place at the Telepresence Centre, Senate Building ended on Friday 20thJune 2025.
In his closing remarks to the participants, the Director of Graduate Training Prof. Julius Kikooma said, “This is the first cohort we are working together with the Center for Teaching and Learning to put together continuous professional development Program so that we are able to enforce the new teaching and learning policy.”
He said that before lecturers are allocated students for supervision, they must first go through this form of formal teaching and learning training to equip them thoroughly with certification required of supervision of graduate students.
“We are coming up with process to ensure that the certificates earned by participants allow you to supervise graduate students. This is the direction of the university and we must ensure that such trainings are concluded and completed successfully by all participants”, Prof. Kikooma.
“We can only have you certified upon completing all the exercises in the training process. This is when you will be eligible to receive the work load for supervision”, He added.
“This training of Supervisors is going to be continuous so that all academic staff in colleges and schools are equipped. This first cohort is going to be our building block to the future trainings in the colleges.”
With such capacity building trainings, Prof. Kikooma said that the university is on the right path to achieving its targets in the new strategic plan of increasing the number of graduate students while progressively reducing the under graduate students.
He further hinted that, “We are in the process of writing a curriculum on this, which will be presented for approval before it is rolled out.”
He echoed all participants to share the knowledge they have acquired adding, “Share all you have learnt, do not keep it. Be open minded, have proper communication channels and the sky will be the limit for you.”
Dr. Robinah N. Kulabako, The Head of Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at CEDAT welcomed the training adding, “This training is very pertinent. I have had the opportunity to supervise Masters and PhD students for over 15 years and I must say that the need to be subjected to this training cannot be over emphasized because there is need to learn, unlearn and relearn many aspects involved in the supervision process.”
She added, “We are moving towards knowledge-based supervision rather than experience-based supervision. This means we must be informed and equipped to be able to advise, guide and mentor to be able to lead a successful supervision journey for both supervisor and supervisee.”
Dr. Andrew Gilbert Were – a lecturer at CEDAT and a participant said, “It is important that all supervisors of graduate students receive this certification from Makerere University through a systematic training process that enables them to attain diverse skills to facilitate learning of graduate students from diverse cultures and with unique set of circumstances.”
“This training is long overdue. In fact, it was an oversight that we could be allowed to supervise students without undergoing supervisors’ training.”
Dr. Dorothy Ssebowa, The Director Centre for Teaching and Learning support- CEES said, “The training this time round has had a mix of early career professionals including Lecturers, Supervisors and Professors share experiences. We have learnt a lot more from experienced supervisors who have shared practices on how they have done supervision over the years.”
“The knowledge and experience-based approaches have made this collaboration very active, interactive and learner centered which has resulted into a collaborative learning from the interdisciplinarity of staff from CEDAT and CAES. The issue now is to continue with professional development across all levels.” She added.
The Makerere University Directorate of Graduate Training (DGT) in collaboration with the Centre for Teaching and Learning completed the training of the first cohort of Graduate Supervisors. This activity was supported by the iCARTA – Institutionalization of Advanced Research Training in Africa, a NORHED II Project at Makerere University.
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