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Department of Chemistry strengthens international ties through International Chemical Symposium

30 June 2021 | Story Dr Nitha Ramnath

organic chemistry_web read more — Dr Charlene Marais, Prof Vladimir Azov and Prof Ulrich Hennecke

The Department of Chemistry at the University of the Free State (UFS) held a successful online International Symposium on Organic Chemistry on 15 June 2021. The symposium brought together scientists from several South African and foreign universities and created a virtual platform for a long-awaited discussion stalled by the COVID-19 pandemic. About 20 participants from universities in South Africa, Belgium, and Germany presented their lectures during the symposium. In addition, this symposium was directed at the postgraduate students in the Department of Chemistry at the UFS, allowing them to present their results to an international audience and to foster their engagement in scientific research.

For more than a year, the COVID-19 pandemic has prevented the common personal communication avenues for the researchers: face-to-face (F2F) conferences, symposia, and workshops. To bridge this gap, Prof Vladimir Azov and Dr Charlene Marais from the Department of Chemistry organised the online meeting for the researchers from the UFS and several other local and foreign universities, all working in the field of organic chemistry.

Online material from the International Symposium on Organic Chemistry is available at here

Collaborative project between the UFS and VUB towards the development of gel-based drug release systems

The symposium also served as a long-awaited inception meeting for the collaborative project between the Organic Chemistry group at the UFS and the Organic Chemistry (ORGC) group at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB). This project is jointly funded by the National Research Foundation (NRF) and FWO (Research Foundation – Flanders); it is aimed at the development of new peptide-based materials with properties controllable by precisely tuned interactions of unnatural amino acids included in the peptide sequence. Such peptides can, for example, be used as smart materials for precisely controllable drug release. The South African team members, directed by Prof Vladimir Azov, will specialise in the development of the new amino acid building blocks, whereas the VUB team, headed by Prof Ulrich Hennecke, will focus on peptide preparation and studies on their properties.

This kick-off meeting was initially planned as a F2F event in June 2020 but was delayed due to the COVID-19 travelling restrictions and finally migrated to a virtual space. This provided an opportunity to present the project proposals and to discuss the initial results in a much broader circle than would have been possible within the common F2F meeting framework.

News Archive

Work clouds and rhizomatic learning – Prof Johannes Cronjé teaches through technology in inaugural lecture

2014-09-29

Prof Johannes Cronjé

Prof Johannes Cronjé has been appointed as visiting professor in the Faculty of Natural and Agricultural Sciences in collaboration with the Centre for Teaching and Learning. The driving force behind his appointment is to develop young and upcoming scholars in the field of online and blended learning at our university.The title of Prof Cronjé’s inaugural lecture, ‘Tablets, Painkillers or Snake Oil – a Remedy for Education?’ suggested a compelling event. Prof Cronjé did not disappoint.

“We live in a world where we carry more information in our pockets than in our entire head,” Prof Cronjé remarked. Interesting fact: an iPhone 4 has 16 million times more processing power than the Apollo 11 – the spacecraft that put the first man on the moon.

If students carry this much processing power in their hands, what should we be teaching students? Prof Cronjé asked. “I believe the answer to that is: we should be teaching them to teach themselves.”

Presenting his inaugural lecture in the same way as he would to his students, Prof Cronjé had the entire audience within minutes vigorously participating in the event.

Prof Cronjé advocates a process called rhizomatic learning. Knowledge, he explained, grows in a similar way to rhizomes’ roots – inseparably connected and seemingly without beginning or end. “Learning is a social aspect: people learn from one another.”

Making use of freely-available online applications, Prof Cronjé demonstrated the power of technology in the classroom. “My objective is to use technology to make people enthusiastic and motivated about the learning process.” Using their smartphones, tablets and laptops, the audience could effortlessly participate through connecting to each other by means of a virtual work cloud. “Knowledge is being created in the room as it happens,” Prof Cronjé explained, “motivating you to participate in this learning experience.”

“There are three things you need for group work to be successful: a mutual goal, individual responsibility and positive interdependence. Then it is real cooperative learning,” Prof Cronjé concluded.

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