Special greetings everyone!
It goes without saying that July surely came with a lot of events and achievements for our Lab. The month kicked off with Akhona Myoli representing our group at the 28th SASBMB congress, which took place from the 7th-10th of July. The congress was hosted by the University of Venda at the Protea Hotel Ranch resort (Polokwane) and Miss Myoli participated in oral presentations, presenting her paper “Charting the Cannabis plant chemical space with computational metabolomics“.
This was then followed by the long-awaited and memorable occasion of Lerato Nephali’s graduation ceremony. Lerato is the first PhD holder in our group and her graduation took place at the University of Johannesburg on the 19th of July. Her PhD thesis, titled “Metabolomics studies to elucidate the biochemistry and molecular mechanisms underlying the effects of different classes of biostimulants on crop plants”, has birthed several insightful publications in various journals. Lerato’s graduation day was filled with excitement and joy as some of our group members were there to witness this occasion and celebrate with her and her family.
PhD Graduation ceremony 2024
The 25th of July saw the launch of The Tugizimana Lab website, created to showcase our research findings, publications, and ongoing projects with the world. Our website offers a variety of resources and content with one of the aims being to foster collaboration and networking. We are always eager to share knowledge and to learn from our visitors. Thus, if anyone is interested in forming collaborations with the group, then please feel free to reach out to us.
We then closed off July with another big achievement, where Morena Tinte defended his PhD thesis titled “4IR technologies in metabolomics studies to elucidate the biochemical frameworks describing the underlying effects of biostimulants on plant growth and defence”. Some of Morena’s work has been published in the Metabolites journal. He worked tirelessly in preparation for this big day, and it paid off at the end. Celebrations were in order after the defence, with a few cocktails at White Campus Square of course!
And that’s a wrap! July has come to pass with the most memorable moments and we’re all looking forward to what August has in store for us – Stay tuned.
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