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2023 Ernst Mach Grant recipient from the UFS

16 August 2023 | Story Rorisang Ramorena | Photo Supplied

Michael Skosana, a student on the Bloemfontein Campus of the University of the Free State (UFS), has been selected as the recipient of the 2023 Ernst Mach Grant scholarship exchange programme at the University of Applied Sciences in Austria.

Skosana, currently pursuing his honours in Financial Economics and Investment Management at the UFS, aspires to pursue not only his master's qualification but also his Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) levels and regulatory exams and ultimately pass his board exams. Skosana is set to leave on 30 August to start the semester on 1 September 2023.

About the grant

The Ernst Mach Grant is a program aimed at students from non-European universities who wish to spend a semester or two at an Austrian University of applied sciences. The Austrian Ministry of Science and Research offers the Ernst Mach Grant to students with non-European citizenship who plan to take up exchanges at an Austrian university.

According to its 2023 – 2028 internationalisation strategy, the UFS aims to integrate international and intercultural dimensions into the university's being, including the formal and informal curriculum. The Office for International Affairs (OIA) enables such comprehensive internationalisation, and specifically its International Scholarships portfolio, under the leadership of Mbali Moiketsi, contributes by liaising with funding bodies for mobility, sharing information about possible opportunities, and supporting students through the process.

The responsibility of the OIA is to ensure that students and staff are exposed to intercultural opportunities as part of their learning curriculum through information sharing. The OIA partners and works with international funding agencies to bring the information to the students and staff and support them through the process.

Skosana's motivation to study abroad is to challenge himself on the spectrum of finance, to learn more about the Austrian and South African economies, and, hopefully, to work in Europe and gain insight before returning home to change the financial landscape of South Africa. He added that “the acquired skills will empower and develop the South African financial economy and educate South Africans on financial literacy, investments, and any financial goals they seek knowledge about.”

Furthermore, Skosana encourages students to be more open to knowledge and international experiences by participating in such opportunities. He emphasizes that “students should always want to broaden their intercultural and global competencies beyond academics.”

For more information related to scholarships and opportunities, contact Mbali Moiketsi at the following email moiketsimv@ufs.ac.za

News Archive

Student excels at international level with research in Inorganic Chemistry

2015-09-21

Carla Pretorius is currently conducting research in
Inorganic Chemistry at the St Petersburg University,
Russia.

Photo:Supplied

Carla Pretorius completed her PhD in Inorganic Chemistry recently, with a thesis entitled “Structural and Reactivity Study of Rhodium(I) Carbonyl Complexes as Model Nano Assemblies”, and has just received her results. The assessors were very impressed, and she will graduate at the next UFS Summer Graduation in December 2015.

She is currently conducting research in St Petersburg, Russia, by invitation. She is working in the group of Prof Vadim Kukushkin of the St Petersburg University, under a bilateral collaboration agreement between the groups of Prof Kukuskin (SPBU) and Prof André Roodt (Head of the Department of Chemistry at the UFS).

Her research involves the intermetallic rhodium-rhodium interactions for the formation of nano-wires and -plates, with applications in the micro-electronics industry, and potentially for harvesting sun energy. She was one of only three young South African scientists invited to attend the workshop “Hot Topics in Contemporary Crystallography” in Split in Croatia during 2014. More recently, she received the prize for best student poster presentation at the international symposium, Indaba 8 in Skukuza in the Kruger National Park, which was judged by an international panel.

Carla was also one of the few international PhD students invited to present a lecture at the 29th European Crystallographic Meeting (ECM29) in Rovinj, Croatia (23-28 August 2015; more than 1 000 delegates from 51 countries). As a result of this lecture, she has just received an invitation to start a collaborative project with a Polish research group at the European Synchrotron Research Facility (ESRF) in Grenoble, France.

According to Prof Roodt, the ESRF ID09B beam line is the only one of its kind in Europe designed for time-resolved Laue diffraction experiments. It has a time-resolution of up to one tenth of a nanosecond, after activation by a laser pulse 100 times shorter (one tenth of a nanosecond when compared to one second is the equivalent of one second compared to 300 years). The results from these experiments will broaden the knowledge on light-induced transformations of very short processes; for example, as in photochemical reactions associated with sun energy harvesting, and will assist in the development of better materials to capture these.

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