Latest News Archive

Please select Category, Year, and then Month to display items

Mr Nikile Ntsababa appointed as Registrar of the UFS

06 May 2019 | Story Lacea Loader | Photo Robin Thuynsma

Mr Nikile Ntsababa took up the position of Registrar at the University of the Free State (UFS) on 1 May 2019. His appointment was approved by the UFS Council during its quarterly meeting on 15 March 2019.

“Mr Ntsababa is an experienced and knowledgeable university registrar with 10 years of senior management experience in institutional compliance, regulatory compliance, academic administration, and university records management. His history of senior roles in the higher-education sector has the advantage of a very good understanding regarding the dynamics, context, and challenges that the position of registrar brings,” says Prof Francis Petersen, Rector and Vice-Chancellor of the UFS.

He holds a Postgraduate Diploma in Records and Archives Management from the University of Fort Hare, a Master of Public Administration from Nelson Mandela University, and a Bachelor of Arts in Communication from the University of Fort Hare. Some of the further certification and short courses he has completed includes a Certificate in International Higher Education Management from Vanderbilt University, Tennessee State in the USA, and a Compliance Management Certificate from the University of Cape Town. He is a Certified Ethics Officer.

Mr Ntsababa was Registrar at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT) from April 2012 to April 2019; before that he was Deputy Registrar at CPUT from April 2009 to March 2012. He also served as Director of Governance at the University of Fort Hare from September 2007 to March 2009, and as Faculty Manager: Management and Commerce at the University of Fort Hare from January 2004 to August 2007.

“I look forward to working at the UFS and to share my knowledge and experience of higher-education legislation and the associated regulatory processes, requirements, and trends in the higher-education sector,” says Mr Ntsababa.

Released by:

Lacea Loader (Director: Communication and Marketing)

Telephone: +27 51 401 2584 | +27 83 645 2454

Email: news@ufs.ac.za | loaderl@ufs.ac.za

Fax: +27 51 444 6393

News Archive

Death may come in adorable little packages

2015-03-23

The main host of the Lassa virus is the Natal Mulimammate mouse.

Photo: Supplied

Postdoctoral researcher, Abdon Atangana, of the Institute for Groundwater Studies at the university recently published an article online about the Lassa Haemorrhagic fever in the Natural Computing Applications Forum. In addition to the terminal transmissible sickness recognised as Ebola haemorrhagic fever, there is another strain called Lassa haemorrhagic fever.

The disease is classified under the arenaviridae virus family. The first outbreaks of the disease were observed in Nigeria, Liberia, Sierra Leone, and the Central African Republic. However, it was first described in 1969 in the town of Lassa, in Borno State, Nigeria.

The main host of the Lassa virus is the Natal Mulimammate mouse, an animal indigenous to most of Sub-Saharan Africa. The contamination in humans characteristically takes place through exposure to animal excrement through the respiratory or gastrointestinal tracts.

Mouthfuls of air containing tiny particle of infective material are understood to be the most noteworthy way of exposure. It is also possible to acquire the infection through broken skin or mucous membranes that are directly exposed to the infective material.

“The aim of my research was to propose a novel mathematical equation used to describe the spread of the illness amongst pregnant women in West Africa. To achieve this, I used my newly-proposed derivative with fractional order called beta-derivative. Since none of the commonly used integral transform could be used to derive the solution of the proposed model, I proposed a new integral transform called Atangana-Transform, and used it, together with some iterative technique, to derive the solution of the model.

“My numerical simulations show that the disease is as deadly amongst pregnant women as Ebola,” Abdon said.

Abdon’s research was submitted to one of Springer’s top-tier journals with an impact factor 1.78. The paper was accepted and published February 2015.