Rhodes University’s Botany Department’s post-graduate students, under the leadership of Professor Barker, have recently received several exciting research-related awards from all over the globe.
John Midgely has been awarded a grant of R60 000 from the South African National Biodiversity Institute Grasslands Programme which will support his research on insect diversity in mountain grasslands. This award is the latest in a number of awards and grants to Professor Barker’s students involved in Barker’s Great Escarpment biodiversity research group.
Last year Janine Fearon was awarded R33 000 from a joint SANBI/NORAD (South African National Biodiversity Institute / Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation) funding initiative for conservation studies on threatened species.
Janine is researching the population genetics and biology of a rare snail that is found only in the southern mountains of the great escarpment. Now in the second year of her MSc she was also awarded a R20 000 South African Biosystematics Initiative (SABI) travel grant to attend the World Malacology conference in Phuket, Thailand later this month where she will present her findings.
Dr Ralph Clark, who graduated earlier this year and who is now a postdoc left for Switzerland to attend the Global Mountain Biodiversity Assessment conference, which is being held in the alpine village of Chandolin (Valais).
This conference’s overarching theme is the functional significance of mountain biodiversity. Ralph will present some of his PhD results about the unusual and endemic flora from the Great Escarpment Mountains.
Ralph’s trip is sponsored by the conference organisers and is likely be the only South African attending. This is not the first time Ralph has travelled to international meetings. During his PhD studies he attended the AETFAT conference in Cameroon and while at the conference he spent time in the Cameroon highlands with an international group of botanists.
Having benefitted from such travels when he himself was a PhD student, Professor Barker feels that, “It is essential for postgrad students to attend international meetings. I make every effort to send my students to relevant meetings around the world. I am very excited that my students have been able to benefit in this way.”