Centre for BMI receives prestigious international award

A leading international software technology company, SAS Institute, recognized North-West University’s Centre for Business Mathematics and Informatics (BMI) at the Potchefstroom Campus for outstanding innovation in bridging the gap between industry and academia. SAS has more than 4 million users and more than 40000 customer sites worldwide. Also more than 2000 universities use SAS software. The SAS Academic Intelligence Award was presented to the Centre for BMI in Lisbon at the SAS Forum International 2005, a major conference attended by more than 2600 delegates from all around the world.

During a live television interview, broadcasted on the website bettermanagement.com, Prof Riaan de Jongh, director of the Centre for BMI, mentioned some of the reasons why this prestigious award was presented to the Centre.

‘The BMI integration training methodology developed by the Centre for BMI is unique and bridges the divide between industry and academia in an innovative way. This is confirmed by the excellent evaluation reports on the industry directed research projects carried out by BMI students under the leadership of BMI supervisors that are received from local and overseas companies. Recently a student, Corne Strydom, received a 90% evaluation mark from a British bank for his final project deliverables.

Furthermore, the industry directed research programme in risk/reward management received considerable international recognition when a technical paper by Prof Hennie Venter and Prof Riaan de Jongh was selected to appear in a Risk book entitled ‘Innovations in Risk Management: Seminal papers from the Journal of Risk’.

The BMI research programme is also involved in the commercialization of research ideas. In the first project, the research of Prof Andre de Waal and Mr Tiny du Toit led to the development of the so-called AutoGANN node for SAS Enterprise Miner, a flagship product of SAS Institute. This node facilitates automatic predictive model building using generalized additive neural networks. This innovation has many potential applications and companies may use it to develop accurate prediction models (e.g. credit scorecards) in a fraction of the time that current model building development methodologies facilitate.

In the second project, the research of Prof Dawie de Jongh on transaction cost analysis (TCA) led to the development of a TCA system in collaboration with the BEE company NOAH. Amonst others, this system may be used by fund managers to evaluate the trading performance of brokers.

Lastly, but most importantly the activities of the SAS RiskLab headed up by Prof Machiel Kruger played a major role in receiving this award. The SAS Risklab is involved in a number of risk management projects for various companies (e.g. Absa and Nedbank). These projects are concerned with SAS Risk Dimensions applications, another flagship product from SAS Institute. Prof Kruger regularly presents industry courses, both locally and abroad, on the practical application of this sophisticated and state-of-the-art software on practical risk management problems’.

Gary Cokins, a world renowned expert and the author of many books on management, congratulated Prof Riaan de Jongh and the Centre for BMI for providing many new insights on bridging the gap between industry and academia.

Murray de Villiers’ role in achieving this award is greatly acknowledged by the Centre for BMI. Murray is SAS South Africa’s partner manager. He prepared the necessary documentation for the SAS Academic Intelligence Award nomination.

Photo: Prof Riaan de Jongh busy with a live television interview on the web site bettermanagement.com

Photo: From left to right: Ms Nina Frauenfeld (SAS Germany), Prof Andre de Waal, Prof Riaan de Jongh, Prof Machiel Kruger, Mr Murray de Villiers (SAS South Africa).