DR AURELIA ALVINA WILLIAMS Senior Lecturer, Biochemistry, North West University
data and statistics. Because South Africa has such a high HIV/Aids rate, her research is pivotal to how the disease will be managed for years to come. Today she is a senior biochemistry lecturer at North West University and is also involved in the training and mentorship of postgraduate students at the university. She is also the deputy secretary of Metabolomics South Africa. Williams is also incredibly passionate about developing young
he wished he could have studied biochemistry and I was curious about what it was because I had never come across that word before, so I went home and did some research.” And the rest is biochemistry history. Born and raised in the town of Nigel in the East Rand, Williams spent her undergraduate years up to masters level at the University of Johannesburg. After completing her PhD at the university of Pretoria, she went to the University of California, San Francisco, to do her postdoctoral studies – an experience that energised her to bring back all her learning and help South Africa grow. “The exposure I received in the United States made me realise that South Africa is on par with the world when it comes to our research. What we could be doing better is to coordinate and archive that research so that it can be more accessible and synchronised,” she says.Williams’ core research interest is in a field called metabolomics, which explores how different stimuli work to change the metabolism of the host through exploring But he didn’t always know this. When Tekane, who was born in the small Eastern Cape town of Whittlesea, finished Grade 12, he knew what he didn’t want to do. He knew he definitely didn’t want to go into medicine because his mother was a nurse and he had seen how taxing that was on her. “A family friend sat me down and highlighted some things I had not taken note of before,” he says. He was reminded of how he built a three-dimensional wire model of the Apollo spaceship from a picture he was given as a birthday gift when he was seven years old. “Everyone was amazed because the picture only showed a third of the spaceship structure, which only revealed one landing leg.”
girls to their fullest potential, and her involvement with the
DreamGirls Academy, a sisterhood organisation of empowered women driven to empower teen girls and young women allows her to do exactly this and more. “It’s important that I tell the young women and girls about my journey so that they can know that if they set their minds at working hard and overcoming whatever challenges are in their way they can make it too. It’s important that they see themselves in me because I see myself in them.” MSc Biochemistry, 2008 prompting, he was able to figure out that there were three landing legs to this spaceship. Later on he built 3D wire models of spaceships based on a TV series he loved called ‘2040’. It was obvious to Tekane’s family friend that he should become an engineer. And so he did. He went on to complete a bachelor’s degree in engineering at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, a master’s at the University of Johannesburg and he’s currently busy with his PhD there too. Tekane currently works as a contract and design engineer on a variety of engineering projects. As a contract engineer he gets involved in the initial stages of the projects such as proposal documentation, rate and deliverable negotiations,
Biochemist, lecturer, and senior academic Dr Aurelia Alvina Williams has always loved learning, so much so that when she was a child, the idea of missing a day of school, for whatever reason, would bring her to tears. One of the pivotal moments that led to her forging a career in the science, technology, engineering, and maths stream happened in the classroom. “I remember my biology teacher reflecting with a sense of longing during one of our lessons that
MR YANGA TEKANE Chief Engineer Eastern Cape Department of Education
Senior engineer Yange Tekane always had a very sophisticated instinct for 3D design, and he knows that engineering is a field that can take him in any possible direction.
As a seven-year-old and with no
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