Latest News Archive
Please select Category, Year, and then Month to display items
08 May 2024
Photo SUPPLIED
The Dean of the Faculty of Natural and Agricultural Sciences, Prof Paul Oberholster, has the pleasure of inviting you to the inaugural lecture of Prof Dirk Opperman.
Date: 21 May 2024
Time: 17:30
Venue: Equitas
Click here to RSVP before Wednesday, 15 May 2024. Alternatively, contact Christelle van Rooyen on +27 51 401 9190.
About Prof Dirk Opperman
Prof Dirk Opperman obtained his PhD in Biochemistry at the University of the Free State in 2008. This was followed by postdoctoral research on directed evolution with Prof Manfred T Reetz at the Max Planck Institute for Coal Research (Germany). In 2010, he was appointed in the Department of Microbiology and Biochemistry. He subsequently established structural biology at the UFS, and his current research focus lies at the interface of evolutionary and structure-function relationships of biocatalysts, and their application in green chemistry. He is an NRF B-rated researcher with co-authored papers in Science, Nature Communications, and Angewandte Chemie.
His research has been funded by both local and international organisations, ranging from industries such as SASOL to the Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF, UK). He has a long-standing collaboration with researchers at the Delft University of Technology (TUDelft, the Netherlands) and is currently part of a European Research Area Network Cofund (ERA-NET Cofund) partnership on Food Systems and Climate (FOSC) that develops biocatalysts for upcycling waste.
Students win national Sanlam competition
2009-11-16
 |
With the big cheque are, from the left: Mr Robert Goff from Sanlam, Jané du Plessis, fourth-year Physiotherapy student; Zenobia Louw, third-year Psychology student; Marissa van Eeden, fourth-year Physiotherapy student; Madelein Markram, M student: Architecture; Conrad Stoffberg, Hons. student: Architecture; Johan Human, fourth-year Physiotherapy student; and Mr Frank Louw from Sanlam.
Photo: Supplied
|
| A team of students from the University of the Free State (UFS) recently walked away with the laurels when they won R100 000 in the national Creativity for Progress competition of Sanlam. In the competition students had to make plans to lure graduates and trained people who left the rural areas due to the economic situation back to those areas. Students first battled it out at department and faculty level before they faced other universities at national level. The UFS team came from three departments and designed a plan whereby the desolated railway stations in the rural areas could be converted into business centres that would breathe new life into those areas. |