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07 February 2018 Photo Facebook
Louzanne and Marné included in national student cross country teams
Athlete Louzanne Coetzee, and her guide, Xavier Adams
Two Kovsie athletes, including the blind athlete and world record holder, Louzanne Coetzee, have been included in the national student cross country team.

Coetzee and Marné Mentz will compete at the World Student Cross Country championship on 7 April in St Gallen in Switzerland.

They qualified for the team after good performances at the Athletics South Africa’s cross country trials held at the University of the Free State (UFS) on 20 January. The distance was over 10km.

What makes Coetzee’s inclusion even more remarkable is the fact that she will be competing against able-bodied runners. The world record holder in the 5 000m in her disability category (T-11) and her new guide, Xavier Adams, finished first among the female students in a time of 39:32, which is her personal best. Mentz ended in second place for students in 39:44. They will make up two of the six spots in the women’s team in Switzerland.

First for Coetzee

 It is the first time that Coetzee was chosen for an able-bodied national team. She is doing a master’s degree in Reconciliation and Social Cohesion this year and Mentz is in her final year of a BEd Intermediate Phase.

Tshepang Sello, another Kovsie and an Olympic athlete from Lesotho, took first position for students in 38:04 but did not qualify for the South African team because of her Lesotho citizenship.

Kesa Molotsane (35:29) was the overall winner. Although Molotsane is still doing her honours this year, she ran in the open division as she no longer qualifies as a student because she is over the age of 25, according to University Sport South Africa regulations.

Molotsane ,26, is the national cross country champion of 2016 and obtained second spot last year.

News Archive

Nano research at the UFS opens door to smart drugs
2011-06-27

 
Prof. Lodewyk Kock, outstanding professor in our Department of Microbial, Biochemical and Food Biotechnology

Novel antifungal, anticancer and anti-malaria drugs that have been identified in the research of Prof. Lodewyk Kock, outstanding professor in the Department of Microbial, Biochemical and Food Biotechnology at our university, will be disclosed later this year at major international conferences in Asia, Europe and the USA. Prof. Kock will be the keynote speaker at these conferences. 

His presentations will be based on the department’s discovery of yeast assays linked to a new nanotechnology for medicine. The assays were recently discovered by his group and can be applied in the development of novel antifungal, anticancer and anti-malaria drugs.
 
Prof. Kock’s focused research at the university, which now also includes his novel nanotechnology for Biology, began in 1982 in collaboration with Prof. Pieter van Wyk (Centre for Microscopy). He recently collaborated with Prof. Hendrik Swart (Department of Physics).
 
Prof. Kock says the development of novel anti-malaria drugs in particular is getting attention across the world due to the high rates of morbidity and mortality caused by the disease worldwide. Approximately 225 million people are infected annually and about a million (many in Africa) die each year. “Many potential smart drugs have been identified with this research and should now be tested further,” says Kock.
  
These new drugs will be disclosed during Prof. Kock’s keynote addresses at the International Conference and Exhibition on Pharmaceutical Regulatory Affairs in Baltimore, USA, from 6 to 7 September 2011, the Medichem 2011 in Beijing, China from 9 to 11 August 2011 and the XVI Congress of European Mycologists in Greece, from 19 to 23 September 2011.

 

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