Dr Addmore Shonhai, an outstanding graduate of Rhodes University and now lecturer at the University of Zululand, visited Grahamstown to participate in the annual research retreat organised by the Biomedical Biotechnology Research Unit (BioBRU), under director, Professor Greg Blatch.
He registered for an MSc under Prof Blatch in 2003, which was later upgraded to a PhD. He graduated in 2007 but stayed on in the lab as a postdoctoral fellow until May 2008 when he took up a lectureship at the University of Zululand.
Dr Shonhai maintained close ties to Prof Blatch and, through a recent grant awarded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) German-African Cooperation Projects in Infectology Programme, his laboratory has been drawn into a more formal collaborative relationship with BioBRU and other international research laboratories who are doing similar work on the role of stress proteins in malaria.
Dr Jude Przyborski and colleagues from the University of Marburg, Germany who are members of a third laboratory to benefit from this grant, also attended the retreat which was an opportunity for mutual learning. The focus of their current collaborative work in combating malaria is to identify chemicals which disable the process of the disease.
Dr Shonhai’s delight is evident as he describes what the DFG grant has meant for him as a young scientist, “I suddenly had thousands of rands to start my research. It meant that I hit the ground running and it was a huge boost for my academic career. It gave me confidence that I could carry on with the work in my own laboratory”.
However, at the first meeting of the collaborators in Marburg, Germany in 2009, Dr Shonhai was lamenting the lack of equipment and resources in his lab back in KZN. He jokingly remarked to Dr Przyborski that if they had any extra equipment lying around, they could send it his way.
Przyborski took up the challenge. His lab had recently been upgraded and their ‘used’ but perfectly functioning equipment was lying in a storeroom, unlikely ever to be used again. It took the joint efforts of Przyborski and Shonhai to get the right wheels in motion on both sides of the equator, but the equipment was duly delivered and installed.
Dr Shonhai acknowledges the contribution this equipment will make to his independence as a researcher and his success as head of his own laboratory. In this role he is discovering the level of commitment to work and students that is required and he thinks often of the role that his supervisor, mentor and friend, Prof Greg Blatch played during his time at Rhodes.
He says, “Greg is a great teacher and a scientist of note. He creates an atmosphere in which things can happen”. He marvels at Prof Blatch’s “ability to remember detail”. He says, “Greg even remembers which amino acid each student has moved within a molecule. This is a rare gift”.
Dr Shonhai calls Prof Blatch ‘an inspiration’, “I don’t know where he gets the energy. He has an incredible work rate but he also has a big heart. It’s not unusual for students to graduate and leave Rhodes only to find their way back into Greg’s lab a year or two afterwards. Students call him long after they have left to update him on their professional and personal progress”.
This is one former student who calls often, now as a peer and fellow scientist who is making a significant contribution to the fight against malaria.