Kayla's experience

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Name: Kayla Veldkamp
My UCT profile focuses on: Innovation Management

“As a team, we got to experience what's involved in realising change and innovation on a large scale."

“As a student at UCT, you get to work on a lot of great and diverse projects. This means that you can learn a lot about different subjects, subjects you sometimes don’t know the first thing about. In the second semester, for example, the central theme was ‘sustainable systems", which means that we had to look into a certain emerging technology that could help us move towards a sustainable society. More specifically, my team and I focused on the shipping industry.

Talking to experts

We researched different kinds of upcoming technologies, such as electric ships or blockchain for port logistics, and looked into how they can contribute to a more sustainable industry, including their feasibility to be implemented in the (near) future.

It was very cool to talk to experts within the field because you get a good image of what’s going on in the industry currently.

Kayla Veldkamp

To identify the most promising technology, we were also able to talk to experts within the field: a Logistics and Economics Professor from Norway and a manager at a shipping company in Singapore. I thought it was very cool to have them assigned to us because you get a good image of what’s going on within the field currently.

High workload

We found that the workload is very high within the shipping industry. Global demand for goods keeps growing worldwide, especially goods shipped from China to Europe and the USA. People work long hours on the ship and spend months away from home, and there’s often a shortage of staff both on the ship and in the harbour, too.

Based on these insights, we decided to look into the opportunities of autonomous ships. I know, not the first thing you’d think of when talking about sustainability, right? At first, we thought so too. But if you think about it: there’s more to sustainability than environmental friendliness. And it turns out that autonomous ships might have a lot of benefits in many different ways – and developments within this area are already at an advanced level, making it very likely to be implemented in the future.

It’s quite funny how a project I was not initially excited about, turned out to be so interesting and even helped me in building my UCT profile.

Kayla Veldkamp

Not only can autonomous ships improve efficiency exceedingly and decrease workload, making the industry as a whole more economically and socially sustainable, but it can also benefit environmental sustainability. For example, autonomous ships can reduce the number of accidents, which are currently caused mainly by human errors, and can have major consequences, economically (e.g. delay), but also environmentally (e.g. oil leaks). Moreover, we found that with autonomous ships, it is technically much easier to change the fossil-fuel-based motor to an electrical motor than with human-controlled ships.

Surprisingly interesting

I have to admit that at first, I was not too enthusiastic about this subject because it sounded very technical (which I’m not). But it turned out to be very interesting! As a team, we looked into all kinds of aspects, such as business models, technology, ethics, politics and governance. This way, I got to experience what’s involved in realising change and innovation on such a large scale. This project made me realise that I want to learn more about bringing all these different aspects together within a large project. It’s quite funny how a project I was not initially excited about, helped me in building my UCT profile, in which I now focus on innovation management!”

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