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Frater Celebration Day Hybrid Conference to be held on 5 May 2022

04 May 2022

Robert Frater — The research efforts in the Department of Cardiothoracic Surgery in the Faculty of Health Sciences, UFS, have come a long way since the establishment of a homograft bank, animal research, and laboratory-based research on cardioplegia by Prof Hannes Meyer in the 1980s

Several world-class scientists and academics in the field of cardiovascular research will converge at the University of the Free State (UFS) on Thursday (5 May 2022) for a one-day hybrid conference to explore and celebrate the massive strides made in this critical field at the UFS Robert W M Frater Cardiovascular Research Centre.

The research efforts in the Department of Cardiothoracic Surgery in the Faculty of Health Sciences, UFS, have come a long way since the establishment of a homograft bank, animal research, and laboratory-based research on cardioplegia by Prof Hannes Meyer in the 1980s. Renewed interest in 2004 under the leadership of Prof Francis E Smit culminated in the establishment of the Robert W M Frater Cardiovascular Research Centre (the Frater Centre) in 2015. This was made possible through donor funding, especially by Dr Robert W M Frater MD PhD (honoris causa, UFS), a South Africa-born New York-based cardiothoracic surgeon, researcher and innovator as infrastructure and project support by the UFS.

The vision of the Frater Centre is to be a leading cardiovascular research institution in South Africa and sub-Saharan Africa. It provides an interdisciplinary training and research platform for scientists and clinicians from different backgrounds to develop as researchers and collaborators in cardiovascular and thoracic surgery and related domains. Activities are focused on the development of African solutions for African problems.

Three main divisions
The Frater Celebration day will highlight the achievements made thus far in a hybrid format in four sessions, which can be attended on a virtual platform or in person. The centre’s local and international collaborators will participate in the programme, and Dr Ronnie van der Merwe, the Group CEO of Mediclinic International, is the guest of honour.

The Frater Centre consists of three main divisions, all of which will form part of the focus of the conference programme in various forms during the day:

1) The Clinical Research Division addresses cardiovascular disease on a broad front, ranging from population and prevalence studies, healthcare solutions and clinical outcomes studies in a specific South African and African context.

2) The Research, Development and Commercialisation division is divided into Tissue Engineering and Cell Biology, Tissue Banking and Large Animal studies, and bioengineering to develop African solutions and technology within these domains.

3) The Simulation Programme provides an integrated interdisciplinary platform for the education and training of individuals and teams in cardiovascular, thoracic, anaesthetic, perfusion technology and related nursing fields in a state-of-the-art simulation unit. The research centre is developing a unique and leading programme and systems in this field. This endeavour is also developing IT models for training, evaluation and research.

The Frater Centre and 4IR
The Centre is firmly established in the fourth industrial revolution. It is new technology-driven, creating new IT platforms and boasts extensive interdisciplinary projects at the biomedical sector's local, national, and international levels.

It is essential to note that the extensive and successful collaboration within the Frater Centre not only exists on institutional level but also nationally and internationally. These collaborators assist, mentor, direct and contribute to the research activities.

Click: Link to the event
Event programme

News Archive

Centre for Africa Studies goes quadruple

2014-09-02

The Centre for Africa Studies at the UFS hosted a book launch on 27 August 2014. Prof Heidi Hudson expressed her excitement as she welcomed the audience and authors that evening, “This has not happened yet at our department where we launch four books at the same time, thus it is a happy and glorious moment for us.”

Book 1: Sacred Spaces and Contested Identities. Space and Ritual Dynamics in Europe and Africa. Edited by Paul Post, Philip Nel and Walter van Beek.

This book deals with the fundamental changes in society and culture that are forcing us to reconsider the position of sacred space, and to do this within the broader context of ritual and religious dynamics and what is called a ‘spatial turn’. Conversely, sacred sites are a privileged way of studying current cultural dynamics. This collection of studies on sacred space concerns itself with both perspectives by exploring place-bound dynamics of the sacred spaces in Africa and Europe.

Book 2: Understanding Namibia. The Trials of Independence. Written by Henning Melber.

This study explores the achievements and failures of Namibia’s transformation since independence. It contrasts the narrative of a post-colonial patriotic history with the socio-economic and political realities of the nation-building project.

Book 3: Peace Diplomacy, Global Justice and International Agency Rethinking Human Security and Ethics in the Spirit of Dag Hammarskjöld. Edited by Carsten Stahn and Henning Melber.

This tribute and critical review of Hammarskjöld's values and legacy examines his approach towards international civil service, agency and value-based leadership, investigates his vision of internationalism and explores his achievements and failures as Secretary-General. The book is also available in print. Melber is a Senior Adviser and Director Emeritus of The Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation, Uppsala, Sweden. He is also Extraordinary Professor at both the University of Pretoria and the Centre for Africa Studies, University of the Free State.

Book 4: Au commencement était le Mimisme: Essai de lecture globale des cours de Marcel Jousse ( In the beginning was mimism: A holistic reading of Marcel Jousse’s lectures). Written by: Edgard Sienaert

This publication allows us to hear the voice of Marcel Jousse, professor of Anthropology of Language, who taught in Paris between 1931 and 1957. Edgard Sienaert, after having edited and translated in English all publications of Jousse, returns here to Jousse’s one-thousand lectures, synthesised through the lens of an anthropology of human mimism. Jousse’s train of thought leads us to question our own thought categories stuck in antagonisms: spirit and matter, concrete and abstract, body and mind, science and faith. Sienaert is currently a research fellow at the Centre for Africa Studies, University of the Free State, with an MA and PhD in Romance Philology. He published widely on medieval French literature and on orality.

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