Dr Jandeli Niemand won the award for the best oral presentation at the 4th Annual Southern African Malaria Research Conference 2018. Through her outstanding contribution UP’s name was held high at the meeting themed: Malaria Elimination: A Moving Target, where many key contributors to malaria elimination were present.

The South African Medical Research Council Office of Malaria Research (MOMR) hosted the annual malaria research conference this year. This was done in collaboration with the South African National Department of Health and the SADC Secretariat. The conference took place from the 30 July to 1 August 2018 in Johannesburg. Through these efforts MOMR created a platform for experienced and emerging scientists to showcase their work. The overall theme of the conference was to allow feedback on the progress made towards achieving the National Department of Health’s goal of eliminating malaria by 2020.   

Dr Niemand is a co-investigator in the Malaria reseach group in the Department of Biochemistry, Genetics and Microbiology, Division Biochemistry. This research group forms part of the University of Pretoria Institute for Sustainable Malaria Control (UP ISMC). The title of her talk was: Inducing controlled cell cycle arrest and re-entry during asexual blood stage development of malaria parasites, Plasmodium falciparum. This work will be submitted for publication in an international journal.