Johannes Arnoldus Snyman

Biography

Until his retirement in 2005 Snyman headed the research activities of the Multidisciplinary Design Optimization Group (MDOG) of the Department of Mechanical and Aeronautical Engineering of the University of Pretoria. In this capacity, during the period 1998 to 2005, he was also the team leader and principal grant-holder of the research programme: Optimal Design for Industry that was supported by the South African National Research Foundation (NRF) within the Focus Area: Economic Growth and International Competitiveness. As Emeritus Professor in the Department, he continued to make contributions to this NRF programme. (The duration of the funding for this programme was formally been extended by the NRF to cover the period 2006 to 2010, with Prof Albert Groenwold - currently with the University of Stellenbosch - the new principal grant-holder and Snyman a co-investigator.) Snyman was also the University of Pretoria project-coordinator of the research project: Optimum design of engineering structures which was done in collaboration with the University of Miskolc in Hungary (project-coordinator Prof Karoly Jarmai) within the Hungarian-South African Intergovernmental S & T Cooperation Programme. The project was initiated in 2000 and ran until the end of 2006.

Research Interest

Over the past twenty five years Snyman’s research has focused on two inter-related aspects, namely, (a) the development of new optimization algorithms and optimization methodologies of specific relevance to solving engineering design problems, and (b) the application of these and other optimization techniques to engineering design problems of practical importance to industry.