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29 March 2023
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Story Samkelo Fetile
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Photo Simba Matema
From left to right: Prof Jean Bernard Lekana-Douki, Director General at the CIRMF; Prof Francis Petersen, Rector and Vice-Chancellor of the UFS; and Prof Jean-Fabrice Yala, Scientific and Technical Director at the CIRMF.
The University of the Free State (UFS) recently welcomed senior members from the International Centre for Medical Research in Franceville (CIRMF), Gabon to sign a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the two entities.
CIRMF is a non-profit medical research centre that was established in 1974. Its primary focus is on diagnosing infectious diseases that pose immediate problems in Gabon and the Central African sub-region. The centre is dedicated to improving public health through various initiatives, including the training of Gabonese health executives in doctoral and post-doctoral education.
“The signing of the MoU with CIRMF is a step in the right direction as the UFS continues to strengthen its footprint on the African Continent. This is seminal in driving the university’s internationalisation processes and opening an avenue to expanding research networks, especially in the African continent,” said Bonolo Makhalemele, Coordinator of strategic projects at the Office for International Affairs, UFS.
In the interest of developing broader research collaborations, the CIRMF delegation met with some UFS academics in a series of engagements, particularly in the Health Sciences Faculty and the Natural and Agricultural Sciences Faculty. “The integration of knowledge and practices that emanate from the continent provides opportunities for the co-creation of knowledge that can be shared with the rest of the world,” said Kagiso Ngake, Coordinator for Partnerships, Collaborative Degrees, and Outgoing Mobility at the Office for International Affairs, UFS.
A concrete roadmap was established to formalise the collaborations that resulted from these engagements and will commence as soon as April 2023. “We have laid a solid foundation and are on the way to a strong and rich partnership!” exclaimed Prof Jean Bernard Lekana-Douki, Director General at the CIRMF.
Prof Francis Petersen, Rector, and Vice-Chancellor of the UFS, further highlighted how the newly established partnership with the CIRMF aligns with the mandate of the UFS Vision 130 of expanding the UFS Africa research network.
UFS mathematician rates as top reviewer
2017-09-27
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.