A Durban cosmologist, Dr Kavilan Moodley, has been awarded the prestigious Silver Jubilee Medal for 2007, by the South African Institute of Physics. The medal, awarded every two years to young researchers under the age of 35 years, was presented to Moodley at the opening event of the South African Institute of Physics’s 52nd annual conference, held last month at Wits University.
The 32-year-old Moodley is a senior lecturer in the school of mathematical sciences at the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN), and has done outstanding work in helping develop the physics research community in South Africa. In recent years, he ran a research internship programme for students from disadvantaged backgrounds, and lectured at the African Institute of Mathematical Sciences and the National Astrophysics and Space Science Programme. His fundraising efforts have resulted in a flux of international visitors to UKZN and South Africa and allowed many students to travel to the United States, France, the United Kingdom and Chile.
Durban-born, and now residing in Verulam, Moodley works in the field of cosmology, which has become one of the most competitive research subjects in recent years. Technology supports the human drive to answer fundamental questions concerning the origin of our world and of our existence — on a level never reached before.
Moodley’s work earned him an invitation to join the Atacama Cosmology Telescope project, a new-generation Cosmic Microwave Background experiment run by the team who carried out the hugely successful Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe project. In this project he is expanding his research interests to include observations with the Southern African Large Telescope. He was also invited to join the science advisory committee for the Square Kilometre Array and is currently supervising a project involving pulsars and gravitational wave science for this.