Overview

The current areas of research interests in the Human Kinetics and Ergonomics program of Rhodes University are:

• Computational methods in general relativity and cosmology - in particular, gravitational radiation from black hole events.

• General relativity, cosmology and fluid dynamics - in particular, large scale structure formation, black hole accretion, gravitational lensing, astrophysical fluid dynamics.

• Computational and mathematical relativity - in particular, initial boundary value problems for the Einstein equations, the conformal field equations and global properties/asymptotic structure of space-times, gravitational waves and their self-interaction, black holes

• Functional analysis; measure theory.

• Geometry; geometric control theory.

• Graph Theory; Combinatorics.

Objects of Study

Humans are the central factor in all activities of work life and society. No social, medical, technical or economical progress may take effect without humans being involved. Human health and performance are critical issues for a productive and successful individual and a progressing society.

Human Kinetics and Ergonomics provides knowledge about the function and the reaction of the human body in order to:

• optimise human performance
• avoid injury and keep healthy in professional activities as well as in private life, and
• improve productivity and quality of output in all domains of work life.

This is of essential importance for South African society to further develop and help individuals to a healthy, wealthy and independent lifestyle.

The focus of the study is the Human factor at different activities and different conditions of life. We study human responses and reactions as well as the design of tasks, treatments, objects and environmental conditions according to the needs of the human. The unique approach of HKE is the holistic consideration of biomechanical, physiological, perceptual, mental and psycho-emotional aspects. This is jointly applied to improve human health, human performance and the productivity of human operations.

HKE is an interdisciplinary subject that integrates knowledge from different disciplines, such as anatomy, biomechanics, neurology, psychology, sociology, anthropology, engineering, computer science, management, economics etc. This variety makes it a fascinating subject but also a challenging one.