One of the highlights on the Faculty’s annual calendar will always be Faculty Day, a proud tradition dating back to 1984. This year’s Faculty Day was no exception. It was an eclectic mix of oral and poster presentations, highlighting the research activities of the Faculty’s talented researchers and bringing together colleagues, peers, students and sponsors. No less than 24 sponsors attended the day which is the most the Faculty has had in any year.

Every year the ten best oral research abstracts in the Faculty are selected and are then presented by the chosen researchers during two separate sessions while the best poster presentations are on display for everyone to see. At the end of the day the best one of each of the oral and poster presentations are then selected, which appropriately rewards researchers for their hard work.

On the day a specific highlight is the prestigious Sir Arnold Theiler Memorial Lecture. This year the guest presenter was Prof Duncan Mitchell, Emeritus Professor of Physiology at the University of the Witwatersrand and Adjunct Professor in the School of Human Sciences at the University of Western Australia, Perth. Prof Mitchell, who is an expert in conservation physiology related to climate change, delivered a thought-provoking and insightful lecture about large mammals facing climate change and painted a very real and factual, yet disturbing picture of what climate change holds for these animals in particular but also the globe.

After all was said and done, it was time for the award ceremony where the respective prize winners for the day were announced but more importantly also the faculty’s researcher and young researchers of the year. This year the honor of being the Researcher of the Year was bestowed on Prof Geoff Fosgate from the Department of Production Animal Studies while Dr Roxanne Buck was awarded the prize for Young Researcher of the Year. The award for Best Oral Presentation went to Ms Andeliza Smit (Runner-up: Dr Kelly du Preez) with Dr Ashleigh Lemon scooping up the award for Best Poster Presentation (Runner-up: Dr Sarah Clift)

The Top 9 other researchers in the Faculty (from position number 2 to 10) are Prof Lyndy McGaw; Prof Vinny Naidoo; Prof Estelle Venter; Prof Anita Michel; Prof Leith Meyer; Prof Johan Schoeman; Prof Marinda Oosthuizen; Prof Christo Botha, and Prof Peter Thompson.

Read the story on twitter here 
 

Click here to VIEW all the Faculty Day PHOTOS
 

Get the Faculty Day publication / Research Overview here