She was the winner of the Department of Water Affairs and Forestry’s Women in Water, Sanitation, and Forestry Research Award in 2007, the DST’s Distinguished Women in Science Award in 2008 and the African Union’s Women in Science Regional (Southern) Award in 2009. Prior to this award, she was recognised four times as an Exceptional Academic Achiever. She has a B rating from the National Research Foundation (NRF). She was awarded the Chancellor’s Award for Research in 2012.

Prof Wingfield’s research interests include fungal population genetics and fungal phylogenetics. In addition to her internationally recognised research programme on the molecular phylogeny and taxonomy of tree pathogenic fungi, she is now developing a fungal genomics programme. Her research team has recently published their first genomics paper, “First fungal genome sequence from Africa: Consequences scientific and regional”. Her research team has already sequenced an additional twenty fungal genomes.  This veritable “tsunami” of sequence data is contributing significantly to the research which is being accomplished at the University of Pretoria.

“In my second term as Deputy Dean: Research and Postgraduate Studies, I hope to further enhance the postgraduate student experience and the research outputs of the Faculty and support the careers, particularly those of the young academics in science.”