2018 will be remembered as a year of many research and innovation highlights for the North-West University (NWU).

It is important for the North-West University (NWU) to focus on critical community challenges in research – this makes research more relevant and useful to the community.

Crammed into tiny rooms in same-sex hostels, away from their partners or families and without proper access to water, electricity or sanitation, South African miners used to live in appalling conditions. Today, the situation of miners at Impala Platinum in Rustenburg has improved markedly, although there are still challenges, as a North-West University (NWU) research study shows.

Water is vital for living organisms but the quality of water is changing due to population growth and environmental changes. Could a miracle plant be the answer?

The North-West University’s (NWU’s) first Biennial Research and Innovation conference promises to be an event like no other. The conference is for researchers, by researchers and with researchers, and is a brand-new highlight on the NWU’s calendar.

The voluntary turnover rate of academics ranges between 41 and 63% and at least 6 000 new academics are required to replace retiring academics within the next five years.

On a dusty street of a village in the North West Province a group of 12-year-olds are cheering each other on as they play kgati, an indigenous game using a skipping rope. As the game intensifies one of them hears her grandmother shouting from the kitchen, requesting her to go to their ward counsellor’s house and ask if social grants will be paid the following day.

Meet Faith Sibiya and Carl Thomson. They are two typical varsity students. Faith is an eccentric foot-dragger and always finds an excuse to do that really important assignment… tomorrow. Carl, on the other hand, is an inattentive fusspot. In less than six months’ time, both of them have to set foot in the world of work.

Staff and students at the North-West University's (NWU’s) Engineering Faculty are in the process of giving the traditional way of manufacturing products a huge blow. They are now using their wide variety of world class three-dimensional printers.