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26 August 2022 | Story Anthony Mthembu | Photo Supplied
Katleho Nkosi
Katleho Nkosi’s design, which won him second place in the national design competition during the Student Entrepreneurship Week 2022.

Katleho Nkosi, a fourth-year Education student at the University of the Free State (UFS), obtained second place in a national design competition hosted virtually by Entrepreneurship Development in Higher Education (EDHE). 

The national design competition formed part of the launch of the Student Entrepreneurship Week 2022, which took place at the University of Venda on 18 August 2022. As such, students from many of the universities in the country, including Nkosi, took part in designing a poster that would be used to advertise the event. 

Nkosi is delighted and excited about this accomplishment. “This win was really surprising and unbelievable for me, because obtaining the second-place position means that my work is good,” said Nkosi.

The participants were allowed to conceptualise and submit their final product between 28 June and 15 July 2022. “I had no experience in this space, I only designed content for fun, and I participated in this competition because I was motivated by a friend,” Nkosi highlighted. 

Click to view document  Click here to view poster in full size.


The motivation behind the design

Since the Student Entrepreneurship Week was held at the University of Venda, Nkosi used the vibrancy and colourfulness of Venda as inspiration for his design. “When I was designing the poster, the only thing on my mind was making sure that I put something together that was related to Venda,” he explained. In addition, the theme for the Entrepreneurship Week was ‘Move to Market’, and Nkosi asserts that he tried to integrate the theme with Venda, and this is how the design came about.

The outcome of the competition and future plans

Although Nkosi did not win the competition, he did receive a cash prize for being among the top three. Furthermore, given his accomplishment, Nkosi would like to take part in many more design competitions moving forward. “Now that I have realised that I have the potential to win, I think I can take this as a career path in the future,” he said. Nkosi is also looking at merging his love of teaching with his newfound love for design. “I’m going to try and find the connection between design and education, because I really love to teach, so I could perhaps become a design teacher,” Nkosi expressed

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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