May 2016 - Jive Media Africa

The International FameLab Competition has chosen its South African Winner: Nozipho Gumbi from Eshowe (KZN), a PhD candidate at the University of South Africa in the Nanotechnology and Water Sustainability Research Unit
The final of the South African leg took place in front of a capacity audience at the glittering Cape Town International Convention Centre – venue of the British Council Going Global conference.

The finalists presented to the high-profile audience and judges, who included Dr Tollulah Oni (UCT school of Public Health) Dr Carolina Odman (Universe awareness Programme) Koki Selepe (Department of Science and Technology) and John Wade Smith (British High Commission. Quentin Cooper of the BBC and FameLab International played the role of MC.
Runners up were Claude Moshobane from Limpopo, currently working with the South African National Biodiversity Institute (SANBI), and Savannah Nuwagaba from Uganda, currently at Stellenbosch University. Moshobane discussed alien invasive plants and how they disrupt the ecosystem, while Nuwagaba spoke about how mathematics is used to predict possible changes in animals’ body size, depending on changes in their eating habits.

But the star of the show was Nozipho Gumbi from Eshowe in KwaZulu-Natal, who is currently studying nanotechnology at UNISA. Gumbi was the overall favourite as she dazzled the audience and the judges with her engaging talk on water filtration using carbon nanotubes.
Nozipho Gumbi’s journey has only just begun. She will soon be packing her bags and jetting off to the United Kingdom for the FameLab International Finals hosted by Cheltenham Festivals to go up against 30 country winners for the international title. Humble, yet confident – Gumbi acknowledged the other candidates saying “each and every one of you could have been the winner tonight”. Congratulations once again to all the contestants and we wish Nozipho all the best for the International finals.

Robert Inglis, Director of Jive Media Africa, presented the Hip Hop Health project to a packed session at the Public Communication of Science and Technology (PCST) 2016 conference. Very positive feedback was received from science communication academics and practitioners alike from as far afield as Mexico, Vietnam, Spain and Australia, with participants calling it “significant” and “beautiful”, among others. The Hip Hop Health communication products are available for free download on the Science Spaza Website. See www.sciencespaza.org

The Agent Zee Project was represented through a poster, which was initially selected as one of 10 to be presented at a session during the conference. At the closing plenary it was selected along with two others as a top conference poster. The poster explored this issue of lack of female representation in science leadership and explored the use of social media in responding to this through the profiling of women scientist role-models. The Agent Zee programme has been awarded free registration at the next PCST conference in New Zealand in 2018. The poster can be seen at www.agentzee.org

Nozipho Gumbi wins FameLab South Africa 2016

Success at the 2016 PCST conference in Istanbul

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