Latest News Archive
Please select Category, Year, and then Month to display items
23 November 2022
|
Story André Damons
Prof Motlalepula Matsabisa, Professor and Director of Pharmacology, will play host to the various stakeholders to network and share knowledge on current developments in indigenous knowledge research and product development, biodiversity, innovation, and commercialisation of the IK-based research products. The Indigenous Knowledge System (IKS) for Health unit in the Department of Pharmacology within the UFS Faculty of Health Sciences was last year awarded an annual Technology Innovation Agency Platform (TIA) grant of R17 million for the next five years.
The research and teaching programme in the School of Clinical Medicine has since been rebranded and is now known as the African Medicines Innovation and Technology Development Platform (AMITD), which will strive to respond to community health needs and address industry research needs and challenges.
The indaba will showcase progress made by TIA and other entities in enriching the development and commercialisation of IK-based innovations. It will take place from 24 to 25 November 2022 in the Equitas Senate Hall at the UFS.
Prof Matsabisa is the chairperson of the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) Regional Expert Advisory Committee on Traditional Medicines for COVID-19. He is also a visiting professor at the Beijing University of Chinese Medicine (BUCM) in Beijing, China, and the Deputy President of the South African Society for Basic and Clinical Pharmacology.

Three more Kovsie staff members involved in Olympic Games
2012-05-30
 |
Dr Derik Coetzee
Photo: Supplied
30 May 2012
|
The South African men’s hockey team will practice on our Bloemfontein Campus from 28 May to 8 June 2012, and the team count on the assistance of three Kovsies to prepare them for the Olympic Games taking place in London later this year.
Dr Derik Coetzee, senior lecturer in the Department of Exercise and Sport Science and Head of our High Performance Centre, has been appointed conditioning coach of the team. He will be assisted by Colleen Jones and Riaan Schoeman, also from this department.
The UFS team and Mr Gregg Clark, the team’s coach, will work out a periodisation programme for the team, which will continue until the hockey finals at the Olympic Games. The programme includes the correct exercises, volume, intensity and number of exercise sessions per week.
This is not the first time that Dr Coetzee has assisted sports teams to prepare for important events. In 2007, he was the conditioning coach of the Springbok rugby team that won the World Cup in France. He was also the conditioning coach of the under-21 Springbok team in 2002 that won the Junior World Cup Tournament.
Dr Coetzee says it is a challenge to ensure that the team performs well at the Olympic Games. “The joy on the faces of the coach and players when they qualified in Japan cannot be described because many people thought they would not qualify.”
With the addition of Dr Coetzee, Ms Jones and Mr Schoeman, a total of six staff members from the UFS will be involved with the Olympic Games and the Paralympic Games. The other three are:
- Dr Louis Holtzhausen, Head of the university’s Department of Sports and Exercise Medicine, has been selected as team doctor for the more than 300 athletes that will represent South Africa at this year’s Olympic Games (in London).
- Ms Ebeth Grobbelaar, Assistant Director of the South African Testing Laboratory for Prohibited Substances at the UFS, was invited to be involved in the Drugs Control Centre in the unit against prohibited substances which will test sportsmen and -women during the games.
- Ms Hetsie Veitch, Head of the Unit for Students with Disabilities, has been invited to be a member of the Classification Panel at the final USA Paralympic athletics trials.