"I strongly believe that the postgraduate student experience should be much more than simply graduating. We ideally want our students to graduate with a passion for learning and research, to achieve their research potential, to have built a network of valuable contacts, to have a deep understanding of academic integrity and other professional standards, and to provide them with a skill set useful in a wide range of related careers."

- Prof Marinda Oosthuizen

 

Prof Marinda Oosthuizen was appointed as new Deputy Dean: Research and Postgraduate Studies with effect from 1 July 2019.

Prof Oosthuizen is a foremost scientist in the field of veterinary molecular parasitology; a scarce skill in South Africa. Her research focuses on tick-borne pathogen discovery, molecular characterization of novel tick-borne haemoparasites and molecular diagnostic assay development. She has a special interest in zoonotic infections transmitted from wildlife reservoir species to humans and domestic animals at the human/livestock/wildlife interface in rural South Africa. To date her research findings have contributed significantly to progress in the field of tick-borne disease research in South Africa, and further afield. Her research has a strong public health relevance and integrates cutting-edge molecular technologies as well as applied research.

With a National Research Foundation C2 rating, Prof Oosthuizen is the author of 60 peer-reviewed publications, including papers in leading international journals such as Science Advances, Parasites & Vectors, Journal of Clinical Microbiology and International Journal of Systematic and Evolutionary Microbiology. She is frequently invited as guest lecturer by several international institutes; and has presented her research findings at numerous national and international conferences. She has been very successful in securing national and international research funding; as principal investigator, she was recently awarded USA National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding within the International Research in Infectious Diseases programme in collaboration with Washington State University.

She obtained her BSc (Agric), BSc (Agric) (Hons) and MSc degrees cum laude with specialization in Microbiology from the University of Pretoria in the early 1990s. Her PhD was awarded by the University of Pretoria in 1998. During 1999 to 2002 she completed two postdoctoral fellowships at the University of the Witwatersrand and University of Pretoria, respectively. In 2003 she joined the Department of Veterinary Tropical Diseases (DVTD), Faculty of Veterinary Science, University of Pretoria as a postdoctoral fellow, but was soon thereafter appointed as Senior Researcher. She was appointed as Senior Lecturer in 2009, promoted to Associate Professor in 2012 and to full Professor in January 2016. 

Click here for Prof Oosthuizen's full CV