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DRD team engages with global experts at 2024 SARIMA conference in Mozambique

26 November 2024 | Story Leonie Bolleurs | Photo Supplied

SARIMA presentations 2024 — The UFS DRD team that attended and presented at the 2024 SARIMA conference in Maputo, Mozambique.

The Directorate Research Development (DRD) team from the University of the Free State (UFS) joined research management professionals from across the globe at the 2024 Southern African Research and Innovation Management Association (SARIMA) Conference held in September this year. This year's conference, hosted for the first time in Mozambique, focused on the theme, It Takes a Village to Raise a Child, highlighting the collective effort needed in research and innovation.

The UFS delegation participated in workshops on navigating change, unlocking research impact potential, tools and techniques for research and innovation project management, reviewing research-related contracts, and assessing associated risks. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation also led a training session, while other workshops explored strengthening global research partnerships and advancing competencies in research management.

Opportunity to share and learn about best practices

Boemo Segoje, Officer for RIMS, Ethics and Creative Outputs, reflected on the conference’s collaborative atmosphere, noting the opportunity to share and learn about best practices. Segoje, alongside Maricel van Rooyen, Senior Officer: Project Manager, RIMS and Ethics, presented a poster titled, Empower the Village with an Effective Research Management System, showcasing the university’s InfoEd Research Information Management System (RIMS). “Our audience was particularly impressed with how RIMS consolidates various research functions into one platform,” said Segoje.

Another UFS poster by Mpho Mashamba, Officer: RIMS Development and Maintenance, and Ethics and Katleho Nyaile from the Centre for Graduate Support (CGS) focused on Breaking Down Silos: Enhancing Interdepartmental Communication in Research Administration. They highlighted the need for collaboration within the university, emphasising how interdepartmental communication enhances research outcomes. “We referred to the importance of collaborating with other units, keeping a line of communication open, as well as engaging various stakeholders. This is especially important for a team like ours whose work impacts every faculty member,” said Mashamba.

Mandy Jampies, Senior Officer Postdoctoral Fellows presented on It Takes a Village: Fostering Collaborative Networks for Postdoctoral Fellow Management. This talk focused on building a ‘village’ for postdoctoral fellows by streamlining visa processes and establishing partnerships with other institutions, such as the University of Johannesburg. "The audience showed great interest in our initiatives, particularly the visa partnership with the Department of Home Affairs," Jampies remarked.

Jampies’s commitment to supporting postdoctoral fellows extended beyond her presentation. In addition to discussing ways to build a supportive ‘village’ through streamlined visa processes and collaborative partnerships, she also played a role in the science communication pre-conference workshop. Reflecting on this workshop, Jampies noted it as a standout moment. “Boemo Segoje and I had the chance to present on the university’s initiatives to boost research visibility through newsletters, social media and webinars,” she shared.

Sugan Moodley, Director of Research Development Finance, remarked that it was interesting to see the Research Management progression made by universities and to compare similarities, differences, strengths and weaknesses between the UFS and other universities.

AI, here to stay

Mashamba found inspiration in a session by the University of Ghana, where he drew parallels between Ghana’s research fund and the UFS Central Research Fund. “Learning from their experience will help enhance our processes here at the university,” he shared. A big fan of lifelong learning, he saw the conference as a great opportunity to pick up new ideas. He said, "I really made the most of every moment. For me, a few key things stood out. First off, having clear policies and standard operating procedures (SOPs) is important for making things run smoothly and getting more done.”

He continued, “As for AI, it’s definitely here to stay. I’m excited about the potential AI has to help streamline our work. Once it’s ready to be used effectively in the workplace, I’d love to bring it into our systems and even use it to improve what we’re already doing." Additionally, Dr Glen Taylor, the Director of Research Development at the UFS, expressed similar enthusiasm for the AI presentation, finding it an interesting insight into the future of research processes.

For Segoje, the conference also highlighted the importance of leadership in research management, referring to a session by the University of Pretoria on Ubuntu leadership. “The emphasis on Ubuntu aligns with the UFS’s values, emphasising the importance of sharing knowledge and empowering others,” she said.

Reflecting on the conference, Jampies concluded, “SARIMA 2024 was one of the best conferences I have attended, providing a wealth of practical knowledge that I can apply to improve my work portfolio.”

News Archive

Is milk really so well-known, asks UFS’s Prof. Osthoff

2011-03-17

Prof. Garry Osthoff
Photo: Stephen Collett

Prof. Garry Osthoff opened a whole new world of milk to the audience in his inaugural lecture, Milk: the well-known (?) food, in our Department of Microbial, Biochemical and Food Biotechnology of the Faculty of Natural and Agricultural Sciences.

Prof. Osthoff has done his research in protein chemistry, immuno-chemistry and enzymology at the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) in Pretoria and post-doctoral research at the Bowman-Grey School of Medicine, North Carolina, USA. That was instrumental in establishing food chemistry at the university.

He is involved in chemical aspects of food, with a focus on dairy science and technology. He is also involved in the research of cheese processing as well as milk evolution and concentrated on milk evolution in his lecture. Knowledge of milk from dairy animals alone does not provide all the explanations of milk as food.

Some aspects he highlighted in his lecture were that milk is the first food to be utilised by young mammals and that it is custom-designed for each species. “However, mankind is an opportunist and has found ways of easy access to food by the practice of agriculture, where plants as well as animals were employed or rather exploited,” he said.

The cow is the best-known milk producer, but environmental conditions forced man to select other animals. In spite of breeding selection, cattle seem not to have adapted to the most extreme conditions such as high altitudes with sub-freezing temperatures, deserts and marshes.

Prof. Osthoff said the consumption of the milk as an adult is not natural; neither is the consumption of milk across species. This practice of mankind may often have consequences, when signs of malnutrition or diseases are noticed. Two common problems are an allergy to milk and lactose intolerance.

Allergies are normally the result of an immune response of the consumer to the foreign proteins found in the milk. In some cases it might help to switch from one milk source to another, such as switching from cow’s milk to goat’s milk.

Prof. Osthoff said lactose intolerance – the inability of adult humans to digest lactose, the milk sugar – is natural, as adults lose that ability to digest lactose. The symptoms of the condition are stomach cramps and diarrhoea. This problem is mainly found in the warmer climates of the world. This could be an indication of early passive development of dairy technology. In these regions milk could not be stored in its fresh form, but in a fermented form, in which case the lactose was pre-digested by micro-organisms, and the human population never adapted to digesting lactose in adulthood.

According to Prof. Osthoff, it is basically the lactose in milk that has spurred dairy technology. Its fermentation has resulted in the development of yoghurts and all the cheeses that we know. In turn, the intolerance to lactose has spurred a further technological solution: lactose-free milk is currently produced by pre-digestion of lactose with enzymes.

It was realised that the milks and products from different species differed in quality aspects such as keeping properties and taste. It was also realised that the nutritional properties differed as well as their effects on health. One example is the mentioned allergy against cow’s milk proteins, which may be solved by the consumption of goat’s milk. The nutritional benefits and technological processing of milk aroused an interest in more information, and it was realised that the information gained from human milk and that of the few domesticated species do not provide a complete explanation of the properties of milk as food. Of the 250 species of milk which have been studied, only the milk of humans and a few domesticated dairy animals has been studied in detail.

Media Release
15 March 2011
Issued by: Lacea Loader
Director: Strategic Communication
Tel: 051 401 2584
Cell: 083 645 2454
E-mail: news@ufs.ac.za

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