We are thrilled to announce that HERI’s Deputy Director Dr. Robyn Pickering has been awarded a NSTF-South32 award for emerging researchers for outstanding contributions to science, engineering, technology (SET) and innovation.

As an isotope geochemist with leanings towards palaeoanthropology and archaeology, her research seeks to understand where and - most importantly, when - our early human ancestors evolved. She also seeks to understand what the environment they lived in was like.

She has spent the last decade developing the U-series technique to date cave rocks, or speleothems, associated with early human (hominin) fossils from caves in South Africa. Her research has provided the first set of direct ages for these caves and is changing the way this record is viewed around the world.