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19 July 2018 Photo Supplied
AEVGI advances Next-Generation Sequencing in Africa
Prof George Armah, Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research, Ghana; Prof Carl Kirkwood, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, USA; Cornelius Hagenmeier, Director: Internationalisation, UFS; Prof Gert van Zyl, Dean: Health Sciences; Dr Martin Nyaga, Senior Lecturer in the NGS Unit; Prof Joyce Tsoka-Gwegweni, Vice-Dean: Health Sciences; Dr Glen Taylor, Senior Director: Research and Development; Prof Jeffrey Mphahlele, Vice-President, South African Medical Research Council.

The inaugural edition of the University of the Free State (UFS) Next-Generation Sequencing (NGS) Data and Bioinformatics Workshop, hosted by the UFS-NGS Unit in the UFS Faculty of Health Sciences, marked a new beginning for the advancement of NGS in Africa under the auspices of the African Enteric Viruses Genome Initiative (AEVGI), which was recently funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

The AEVGI will generate rotavirus genomes at the UFS-NGS Unit to investigate the long-term effects of the introduction of the monovalent RV1 vaccine in three African countries – Ghana, Malawi, and South Africa.

The workshop attracted over 90 participants from 15 national and international institutions, with organisations from seven different countries as well as company representatives attending the event. The workshop kicked off with a courtesy call to the Rector and Vice-Chancellor, Prof Francis Petersen, followed by a stakeholder meeting with the executive management of the UFS.

The funding was secured through an award to the principal investigator, Dr Martin Nyaga, and sub-awards to co-investigators, Dr Khuzwayo Jere, Dr Francis Dennis, and Dr Valentine Ndze. According to attendee evaluations of the workshop, the remarkable performance of the workshop instructors was outstanding. Through practical sessions, participants were equipped with knowledge on how to apply several tools of genetic data analysis, using the rotavirus genome as a model to construct and interpret different genomic datasets.

A total of 65 students attended the hands-on workshop, the majority of which were from South African higher-education institutions. The organisers are grateful to the sponsors, particularly to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the University of the Free State, for making the workshop a success. Whitehead Scientific and the South African Medical Research Council also played a major role in the success of the workshop. The local organising committee consisted of Dr Martin Nyaga (host, convener and chair), Dr Saheed Sabiu (secretary), and Mr Stephanus Riekert (principal ICT support).

News Archive

IRSJ marks five years of championing social justice
2016-08-12

Description: IRSJ 5 year Tags: IRSJ 5 year

Members of the Advisory Board of the IRSJ,
Prof Michalinos Zembylas (Open University
of Cyprus), Prof Shirley Anne Tate (Leeds
University, England), and Prof Relebohile
Moletsane (University of KwaZulu-Natal),
listen to a speaker on the programme.
 Photo: Lihlumelo Toyana

The Institute for Reconciliation and Social Justice (IRSJ) marked its fifth anniversary with a function on 27 July 2016 in the Reitz Hall of the Centenary Complex on the Bloemfontein Campus of the University of the Free State (UFS). Earlier that day, the Advisory Board of the IRSJ, chaired by Prof Jonathan Jansen, Vice-Chancellor and Rector of the UFS, hosted their annual meeting.

A new book was also launched, co-authored by JC van der Merwe, Deputy-Director at the IRSJ and Dionne van Reenen, researcher and PhD candidate at the IRSJ. It is entitled Transformation and Legitimation in Post-apartheid Universities: Reading Discourses from ‘Reitz’. The function featured not only reflections on the IRSJ, but a four-member panel discussion of the book and higher education in 2016.

The IRSJ came into being officially at the UFS in January 2011. Prof André Keet, Director of the IRSJ, said: “With a flexibility and trust not easily found in the higher education sector, the university management gave us the latitude and support to fashion an outfit that responds to social life within and outside the borders of the university, locally and globally.”

The IRSJ has not hesitated to be bold and
courageous in reforming ... traditional policies."

 

Prof Jansen went on to mention three things he finds appealing about the IRSJ: “Thanks to Prof Keet and his team’s vision and understanding of how important it is for students to have a space in which they can learn how to be, learn how to think, and learn how to contribute, the IRSJ has become a place where students can learn about things that they might not learn in the classroom. Second, it created, for the first time, a space where members of the LGBTIQ community could gather in one place. And third, it speaks to the intellectual life of the university, as evidenced by the research and publications produced over the past few years.”

Prof Jansen added: “The IRSJ will only be successful to the extent that we have safe spaces, courageous spaces, in which not only black students talk to themselves, but where black and white students talk together about their difficulties. If you’re entangled, you can’t get out of [that] unless you speak to the other person.”

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Prof Michalinos Zembylas of the Open University of Cyprus and member of the Advisory Board, said of the IRSJ: “The works produced by the institute in this short time have been valuable to this community and beyond, because they recognise the complexities of education, ... while pushing the boundaries of how to translate theoretical discussions into practical, everyday conditions. ... For example, the IRSJ has not hesitated to be bold and courageous in reforming some traditional policies in this university—remnants of an ambivalent past that reproduced inequality and disadvantage.

In reflecting on how the IRSJ came into being during her opening remarks, Dr Lis Lange, Vice-Rector: Academic at the UFS, said that it has always been “dedicated to transformation.” She added that it “gathered the energy and creativity of some of our most promising student leaders.” She concluded: “For me, the greatest success of the Institute, besides publications and local and international networks, is the fact that something that started in the margins is being asked today to come closer to the centre, to play a larger role in the structural transformation of the university.”

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