Dewald Roode received a B.A. in
theoretical physics, an M.A. in
mathematics from the
University of Potchefstroom in South Africa, another in
physics from the same institute, and a PhD in
operations research under the supervision of
Guus Zoutendijk at the
University of Leiden. In 1988 Roode was appointed to head the new Department of
Informatics at the
University of Pretoria, while continuing on a part-time basis with consultancy work. Within five years of starting, the Department of Informatics at the
University of Pretoria was internationally known, and welcomed a regular stream of international visitors who contributed tremendously to the continued development of the Department. After his early retirement in 2001, Roode was a visiting professor in the Department of
Information Systems at the
University of Cape Town from 2003 till his death in 2009, and also at the
Cape Peninsula University of Technology since 2004. Apart from his continued academic involvement with various universities, he completed a six-year term in 2007 as chair of Technical Committee 8 on Information Systems of the
International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP), and was a member of the Steering Committee of IFIP’s World Information Technology Forum in
Lithuania in 2003 and in
Botswana in 2005. In 2008, he developed and presented a series of 14 seminars on research and innovation core skills for the South African
Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR). Roode supervised more than 30 doctoral students to completion. He was the recipient of the 2008 Association for Information Systems
Leo Award for exceptional lifetime achievement in the Information Systems discipline. In 2008 Dewald Roode was also honoured by the
International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) with the highest accolade for service, the Silver Core. ==Work ==