CERECAM has been in existence, in various formats, since 1980 and has focused on research and training in nonlinear mechanics. The late Professor John B. Martin founded the Nonlinear Structural Mechanics Research Unit in 1980 in the Department of Civil Engineering at UCT. The unit then became the Applied Mechanics Research Unit in 1985, when the Foundation for Research Development (FRD) initiated a system of programme funding. In 1988, the unit was renamed the FRD/UCT Centre for Research in Computational and Applied Mechanics when it was granted Centre status by the FRD. Having previously served as deputy director and co-director, Professor B. Daya Reddy became director in 1999 upon Professor Martin’s death. When UCT initiated a University Research Committee (URC) five-yearly research unit review system in 2003, CERECAM was among the first group to undergo review in 2004. There have been subsequent reviews in 2009, 2015 and 2022. From 2007 until 2021, Professor Reddy held a South African Research Chairs Initiative (SARChI) Chair in Computational Mechanics. Professor Malebogo Ngoepe succeeded Professor Reddy as director in October 2021.
Over the years, CERECAM’s scope of activities has reflected the variety of interests and themes within the broader field of computational mechanics. Staff and students have been drawn from the Departments of Chemical, Civil and Mechanical Engineering, Human Biology, Mathematics and Applied Mathematics, Physics and Human Biology. Currently, the nine members are drawn from four departments in two faculties (EBE and Science). While a significant portion of the research has been in computational mechanics, other areas of interest include theoretical studies in solid and fluid mechanics, computational biomechanics, numerical analysis, computational algorithms and experimental studies. Many of these themes are derived from practical problems.
