Laurie Butgereit

Laurie Butgereit is the driving force behind the “Dr Math” project which has been running in South Africa since 2007.  “Dr Math” links school pupils who use chat protocols on their cell phones to university tutors who help them with their mathematics homework.

The tutors are all volunteers and are typically engineering students from South African universities, although there are a growing number of volunteer tutors from North America and Europe. The pupils are primarily South African secondary school pupils who use a low-cost chat protocol on their cell phones. Since its inception, over 30,000 pupils have registered for this free service.

 Laurie is a principal Technologist at Meraka Institute, Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR). She divides her time between the “Dr Math” project and the “Internet of Things” engineering group.c