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08 May 2024
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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.
Prof Neil Heideman awarded a Fellowship
2006-07-25
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Prof Neil Heideman, Vice-Dean of the Faculty of Natural and Agricultural Sciences at the University of the Free State (UFS), was awarded the Fulbright Senior Researcher Fellowship to visit the laboratory of Prof Jack Sites, a fellow herpetologist at Brigham Young University, Utah, in the United States of America (USA), from October 2006-January 2007.
The Fulbright programme is a flagship programme of the government of the USA which focuses on the exchange of international experts in a variety of educational activities such as advanced research and university lecturing.
Prof Heideman will use the opportunity to develop an understanding of the application of micro satellites (short repetitive sequences in DNA molecules) to population genetics questions. In recent years micro satellites have become the marker of choice for measuring genetic variability in populations. Prof Sites has extensive experience in the application of the technique and is therefore an ideal candidate to spend time with. Although not new to South Africa, the country's capacity in the use of micro satellites is still very limited, being essentially non-existent among herpetologists.
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