The Department would like to congratulate Liesl Dyson and Francis Wasswa Nsubuga for being promoted to Associate Professor and Senior Lecturer respectively.

Liesl has been a meteorologist for nearly 30-years and joined the University of Pretoria in 1997. Focusing on understanding processes and thereby improving short-term weather forecasting techniques, she has published scientific articles in peer reviewed publications mainly on topics of severe weather events and heavy rainfall. She was also awarded the Knowledge Tree Innovation Award, which celebrates outstanding design, process and product development of innovative technologies, from the Water Research Commission.

Liesl is a member of the South African Society of Atmospheric Sciences and has been Honorary Secretary of the organization since 2012. She also has a keen interest in education and training in Meteorology and has been a member of international organization CALMET since 2009.

Francis has a keen interest in climate change, water resources management, and livelihoods formations. Having worked (at Masters level) on establishing the challenges faced by the formal and informal institutions of water and the extent to which people get access to this water in Rubaga division, and (on Doctoral level) examining the climatic trends of rainfall and temperature in Uganda using historical data, his current research approach is to investigate climate change in observed historical data in order to detect a climate change signal. Francis also currently served on the GLOBE Education working group as the Africa representative. He has been serving on the working group since 2016.