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01 July 2022 | Story Dr Nitha Ramnath | Photo Supplied
Leah Molatseli.


Leah Molatseli– alumna and Council member of the University of the Free State (UFS) – is the first African woman to be recognised by the American Bar Association in its list of Women of Legal Tech for her contribution and influence in the legal tech industry. A commitment to diversity is one of the core values of the American Bar Association, which the Law Practice Division aims to reinforce in the legal tech sector. Annually, talented women in the legal tech space are recognised for making an impact on legal tech.

A lawyer by profession, published legal tech author and speaker, as well as legal tech and innovation specialist, Molatseli uses technology and innovative means to empower and educate law professionals.  She is currently head of business development at Legal Interact, a South African law firm that provides technology solutions for the legal industry. 

Prof Francis Petersen, Rector and Vice-Chancellor of the UFS, congratulated Molatseli on her achievement. “On behalf of the executive committee of the University of the Free State (UFS) and the university community, I would like to extend my warmest congratulations on being recognised by the American Bar Association for your contribution to the legal tech industry. Being the first African woman to be honoured in this way makes this accomplishment even more extraordinary. You are a trailblazer in your field in so many ways,” said Prof Petersen. 

Prof Petersen said, “The university, and the Faculty of Law in particular, is proud to be associated with you. We also appreciate your continued support to the institution. Your dedication and expertise inspire us all – I will continue to follow your professional journey, because I know there is much more in store”. Prof Petersen continued to thank Molatseli for contributing to the legal field in an innovative and contemporary manner. 

Molatseli is host of and guest speaker for various legal tech talks globally, as well as a guest lecturer at the University of Cape Town, where she develops and teaches legal tech innovation-related courses to the legal industry. A Mandela Washington fellow, as well as a Notre Dame alumna, she is a member of the Women in Tech South African Chapter, a country member for the Global Legal Tech Consortium, and is one of 2022’s ILTA’s Most Influential Women in Legal Tech honourees.  


News Archive

UFS mathematician rates as top reviewer
2017-09-27

Description: Abdon Atanaga Tags: pre-publication peer reviews, Prof Abdon Atangana, Institute for Groundwater Studies, Publons for Publons Peer Review Awards 

Prof Abdon Atangana is a professor at the
Institute for Groundwater Studies at the University
of the Free State.
Photo: Rulanzen Martin

South Africa was included in the top 30 countries in terms of researchers who added the most pre-publication peer reviews. 

Prof Abdon Atangana, a professor of Applied Mathematics at the Institute for Groundwater Studies at the University of the Free State (UFS), is included in the list of top reviewers from top countries, as determined by the number of verified pre-publication peer reviews added to Publons for Publons Peer Review Awards 2017.  

Producing the most verified peer reviews

He rated in the top 1% of reviewers (9th), in all fields, who performed the most verified pre-publication peer reviews at Publons for Publons Peer Review Awards 2017. In 2017 he also received the following awards:
- Top reviewers for UFS in the category Mathematics, rating in eighth place. In this category Stanford University rated second. Rating in ninth place is the University of Luxembourg.
- Top reviewers for Mathematics (rating 1st). In this category the Southern Illinois University and the Johns Hopkins University in the US rated in 27th and 25th place respectively. 
- Top reviewers for Engineering (rating 47th)

Prof Atangana’s research interests are methods and applications of partial and ordinary differential equations, fractional differential equations, perturbation methods, asymptotic methods, iterative methods, and groundwater modelling.

Passion for the development of science
Key to his success as peer reviewer is his passion for the development of science, his ability to write fair reports about a given manuscript, as well as his knowledge of what has been done and what the challenges are in a given field to be able to give a report that will help the advancement of science. 

“Due to the impact of my research papers in the field of mathematics and applied mathematics and also my international recognition in the field of applied mathematics, many editors in more than 100 journals of applied mathematics trust my opinion to assess whether a submitted paper in a given journal of mathematics and applied mathematics can be published or not,” said Prof Atangana.

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