Winner of the 2015/2016 NSTF-South32 award for research capacity development over the last 5-10 years, Prof Dunsby believes that “any research is far more productive and successful when you involve other people, whether they’re postgrad or post-doctoral students”. Professor of Cosmology and co-director of the Astrophysics, Cosmology and Gravity Centre at the University of Cape Town, Dunsby played a key role in the establishment of SA’s National Astronomy and Space Science Programme (NASSP).

First initiated in 2001, with the ambitious goal of pooling the national teaching and research expertise available to train a new and diverse generation of South African researchers, the NASPP is now regarded as SA’s flagship programme in astronomy, cosmology and the space sciences.
Between 2003 and 2012, Dunsby successfully attracted and supervised a significant number of graduation research students in cosmology, astrophysics and space science. During this time, the NASSP graduated a total of 156 honours students, 98 Master’s students and 29 PhD students. In January 2017, Dunsby took up the post of head of mathematics and applied mathematics at UCT.  Read more