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SAEON GSN committee members going places
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In December 2009, SAEON eNews published an article by Musa Mlambo on the ALTER-Net Summer School he attended, courtesy of SAEON, in a village called Peyresq in the south of France.
ALTER-Net is a network of 26 partner institutes from 18 European countries. True to its nature, the network integrates research capacities across Europe, assessing changes in biodiversity, analysing the effect of those changes on ecosystem services and informing policymakers and the public about this at a European scale.
The Summer School, aimed at aspiring PhD students, emphasised the importance of an interdisciplinary approach in the study of biodiversity and ecosystems. Musa, a former member of SAEON’s Graduate Student Network committee, described the experience as "truly stimulating and enriching" in his article.
One of the lecturers with whom Musa worked closely at the Summer School was Dr Martin Sharman from the EU Commission in Brussels. This encounter has now resulted in a paper entitled Wicked: The Problem of Biodiversity Loss co-authored by Musa and Dr Sharman that appeared in the German publication Gaia - Ecological perspectives for science and society No. 4 of 2012.
Following this notable achievement, Musa again thanked SAEON for their support. "I hope the paper reflects and advances the wide objective of SAEON in creating infrastructure and capacity in environmental research," he said.
Sharing the fascinating world of science
The Young Science Communicators Competition (YSCC) of the South African Agency for Science and Technology Advancement (SAASTA) encourages young scientists and science students under the age of 35 to communicate their work, either through a newspaper article, a radio script or a viral video. This year alone the competition attracted 60 entries from all over South Africa across the three categories.
In 2010 Melissa Boonzaaier, currently Coordinator of the GSN Committee, scooped top honours in the YSCC radio category while doing her Master's on sea turtles at the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University in Port Elizabeth.
"Thereafter, I became much more interested in developing my science communication skills, thanks to SAASTA," Melissa says, "to such an extent that I became involved in a few other SAASTA activities, which included my first guest speaking event at SAASTA's National Schools Debate in Pretoria in 2011."
Although she did not win this year, Melissa’s radio script was commended by the judges. "For the YSCC 2013, I wanted to write a piece to expose the marine invertebrate group, bryozoans (also known as "moss animals") and the limited, but important, research conducted on this faunal group, for example anti-cancer drug studies," she explains. According to Melissa these marine invertebrates, like many other marine invertebrate taxa such as tunicates and sponges, have been neglected due to lack of interest in this fauna and the limited number of taxonomists in South Africa.
Melissa is currently enrolled as a PhD student at the University of the Western Cape (UWC) and is based at the Iziko South African Museum. Her promoters are Dr Wayne Florence, the only bryozoan taxonomist in South Africa and marine biologist and pelagic ecologist Prof. Mark Gibbons at UWC. Her research project will be examining bryozoan diversity along the South African coast.
Melissa will be representing South Africa at the International Bryozoological Association (IBA) meeting in Italy in June 2013, where she will present her research to date. With Melissa involved in this ground-breaking work, the Bryozoa are likely to become a household name in the near future.
