Research

On the occasion of the annual breakfast hosted by the Dean of the Faculty of Natural Sciences on 29 November 2018, the winner of the award for Best First-year Lecturer, as well as the winner of the newly introduced award for Best Lecturer for Senior Courses were announced. The first of the abovementioned awards went to Dr Harry Wiggins from the Department of Mathematics and Applied Mathematics, and the second to Dr Jaco Visagie from the Department of Statistics.

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Two internationally renowned researchers from the University of Pretoria (UP), Prof Mike Wingfield and Prof Bernard Slippers, have been included on the 2018 Web of Science’s list of the world’s most highly cited researchers.

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Thulani Sibanda, a PhD student in Food Science, was recently awarded first prize in the 2018 Food Safety without Borders Graduate Student Paper Competition at the International Union of Food Science and Technology World Food Science and Technology Congress held in Mumbai, India.

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Dr Osmond Mlonyeni, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Pretoria’s Forestry and Agricultural Biotechnology Institute (FABI), was recently appointed to The Innovation Hub’s Board of Directors.

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Dr Colleta Gandidzanwa, a researcher in the Department of Agricultural Economics, Extension and Rural Development at the University of Pretoria, had the unique opportunity to visit Cornell University in Ithaca, New York in October, having been selected earlier this year as a 2018 fellow for the Structural Transformation of African Agriculture and Rural Spaces (STAARS).

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The Department of Mathematics and Applied Mathematics is celebrating 10 years of Mathematical Biology at UP this year. In 2008, the Department drove the decision to make Mathematical Biology a strategic research focus for the Department.

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For the third year in a row hunger is rising across the world. And, as a recent report by the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organisation shows, the situation is worsening in most regions in Africa. Almost 21% of the continent’s population of 1,216 billion is undernourished. Many factors drive this trend. Among these are rising population growth, conflict and poor governance. Severe weather conditions and climate change also play a role. This leads to food insecurity: a state of deprivation ranging from starvation through severe and constant hunger to deficiencies in vitamins and minerals. It’s rooted in poverty and inequalities that deprive people of the right to adequate food to meet their needs. We reviewed whether the food security plans of 10 countries were aligned with the African Union’s Malabo Biennial Review technical guidelines (which is related to agriculture and food security), the continent’s Agenda 2063 and the Sustainable Development Goal targets. The ten countries were Benin, Burkina Faso, Cote d'Ivoire, Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Liberia, Malawi, Niger, Nigeria and Togo.

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Dr Thulani Makhalanyane, Senior Lecturer in the Department of Biochemistry, Genetics and Microbiology at the University of Pretoria, has recently been elected to the board of the International Society of Microbial Ecology (ISME). The board currently has 12 directors from the USA, Europe, South America, and Australia. At 34 years old, Dr Makhalanyane becomes the first African to join the prestigious board of directors, taking up a 4-year term from October 2018.

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