The live presentation of this event has already taken place.

Please view the PDF slides here or watch the video recording below:

Webinar details

This webinar relates to our Bachelor of Engineering Technology in Electrical Engineering programme.

This session explores how emerging technologies, particularly artificial intelligence, are transforming the engineering landscape. It highlights how AI is being integrated into design, analysis, and maintenance, and what this means for the next generation of engineers.

The webinar will be recorded and will be sent out to registered attendees afterwards.

A certificate of attendance will be provided to attendees who request one near the end of the live webinar session.

Key takeaways from this webinar

• AI is enhancing engineering through automation, data analysis, and predictive capabilities.
• Future engineers will need to combine technical skills with digital and data literacy.
• Technology is reshaping how engineers design, build, and maintain systems.

Presenters
Lecturer Eldridge Mapfumo

Eldridge Mapfumo – Head of Academics

Eldridge Mapfumo is an accomplished academic leader and engineering professional with over a decade of experience across higher education, engineering consulting, and project leadership. He brings a strong track record in driving academic excellence and institutional performance. He possesses deep expertise in academic programme development, curriculum design, quality assurance, and regulatory compliance within the South African higher education framework.

He has led academic teams, supervised students, coordinated national examinations, and developed high-quality learning materials that enhance student success and graduate employability. In senior academic and leadership roles, he has contributed to strategic planning, academic operations management, staff development, and stakeholder engagement with regulatory and industry bodies.

Complementing his academic leadership, he has extensive engineering industry experience, having led multidisciplinary teams of up to 37 professionals and delivered complex projects valued between R500,000 and R50 million across the energy, infrastructure, and consulting sectors.
He holds Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Mechanical Engineering (Russia), a Postgraduate Diploma in Higher Education (cum laude), and is completing a PhD in Industrial Engineering. He has also been invited to contribute to the Russia–Africa Advisory Panel, supporting strategic collaboration between governments.

Dr. Andrea Hayes – Lecturer (University of the Witwatersrand)

Dr Andrea Hayes is a lecturer in Game Design in the Digital Arts Department at the University of the Witwatersrand. Her research focuses on video games as complex cultural, technological and ecological systems, with particular interest in how game worlds, mechanics, narratives, and player interactions shape meaning. Her work engages with game studies, environmental storytelling, spatiality, gender representation, and the Anthropocene in games.

Andrea’s doctoral research explored the translation of South African literature into a virtual reality game prototype, examining how interactive systems can invite players to think critically about landscape, climate change, and human–nonhuman relationships. More broadly, her research considers how video games can function as systems of knowledge, design, simulation, and critique, particularly within South African and Global South contexts.

As both a researcher and educator, Andrea is interested in how game design can bridge creative practice, theory, technology and social inquiry. Her work contributes to ongoing conversations about the role of games in education, culture, sustainability and systems thinking.