On 20 June 2019, the Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET) introduced the Future Professors Programme to accelerate movement of senior researchers to professorships. It is a competitive, selective and transformative programme aimed to prepare promising and productive early career academics to become a new cohort of South African professors. The Future Professors Programme offers a structured curriculum that includes intensive seminars and international placement aimed at accelerating the readiness of young academics for the professoriate. Candidates considered are lecturers or senior lecturers in possession of a doctorate and who have already been able to demonstrate significant academic achievement beyond the doctoral degree.

The following attributes were considered during the competitive selection process:
* A deep commitment to the pursuit of advanced scholarship.
* Evidence of productive and imaginative scholarly work.
* Early signs of purpose and direction in academic work.
* Novelty, richness and a willingness to take risks in the pursuit of large ideas.
* Personal qualities of self-awareness, teachability and the need to grow.
* Evidence of resilience and persistence in the face of setbacks.
* A willingness to benefit from and contribute to a community of scholars.

We are pleased to announce that Dr Vukosi Marivate, senior lecturer at the Department of Computer Science and the ABSA Data Science chair, was recently selected for the DHET Future Professors Programme. Selection was competitive with nominations from 26 universities, where every university was only allowed to put 5 candidates forward.