Francois Boshoff

14 February 2023

Francois Boshoff Curro Durbanville - 2015

When you think of Rome, Italy do you picture amazing architecture, a rich history and perhaps gelato and pasta? Well, you can ask Francois Boshoff, Curro Durbanville Class of 2015, if the Eternal City lives up to its reputation … but maybe he won’t be able to give an answer since he is working too hard on his PhD while attending Sapienza University of Rome as part of the Erasmus+ exchange programme.

Being part of this programme is such a big honour and extremely well deserved! Francois’s PhD is an extension of his MEng (mechanical engineering) that he obtained from Stellenbosch University in 2022, with a pass of 85%. Wow! And his thesis title? ‘Design of an axial flow fan for a unique cooling application’. The additional work for his PhD will focus on the air-cooled heat exchanger for which the fan was designed.

While at Stellenbosch, Francois also worked part-time as a lab engineer for the university’s wind-tunnel, towing tank and composites workshop. We’ll just pretend to know what this all means … although to us it definitely sounds as if Francois is going to achieve greatness and solve many problems in the engineering field and beyond.

Francois will be in Rome until the end of July and wish him all the best on this adventure, and for the rest of his studies.