Earth Sciences at Stellenbosch we have been very busy, carrying on our core business of teaching and research with considerable success. Our aim is to be a strong component within our university – which has successfully aligned itself as a premier research-driven institution in South Africa. We are concentrating on adapting and developing our teaching methods to suit the changing character of our undergraduate intake as well as paying attention to getting out the research, to maintain our prominent position in petrology, geochemistry, structural geology and tectonics. In the next issue we will highlight major enhancements to our analytical facilities, but here we will concentrate on recent staffing developments at Stellies.
Susanne Fietz
Two academic staff have recently joined the department and one not-quite-so-new person has never been properly introduced to you. Dr Susanne Fietz (who has German nationality) joined us after her predecessor in the position of lecturer in environmental geochemistrty (Dr Cathy Clarke) defected to her native Soil Science department at Stellenbosch. Susanne received her PhD in Natural Sciences from Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, for her work on current and past environmental changes in Lake Baikal, Siberia. She then joined the University of Essex in the UK, to study exopolymers as potential survival strategies of Antarctic diatoms. Susanne then moved to Universitat Autónoma de Barcelona in Spain, and worked on molecular markers for palaeoclimate reconstructions. Her current research focuses on modern biogeochemical cycles, including biological responses to alterations, as well as on past climate and environmental changes. She studies modern aquatic ecosystems, sedimentation processes and sedimentary archives. Her work is focused on sites in the Southern Ocean (on South Africa's doorstep, and a key player in marine biogeochemical cycles) as well as the Arctic and large lakes such as Baikal.
Ryan Tucker
After the departure of our previous sedimentologist, Dr Daniel Mikeš, we appointed Dr Ryan Tucker, a US citizen, to this position. Ryan's undergraduate studies (Geology with a minor in palaeontology) were in the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology in Rapid City, South Dakota. In 2010, he completed an MSc in vertebrate palaeontology at the same institution, and his 2014 PhD is from James Cook University in Townsville, Australia. Ryan's research interests include sedimentology, stratigraphy and palaeontology. In particular he works on sedimentary environments using chemical tracers of sediment provenance (e.g., detrital zircon geochronology and Lu-Hf isotopes) as well as palaeontology to address questions about the fossil record and the evolution of sedimentary basins. He has existing research collaborations in Australia, North America, France, and across Sub-Saharan Africa and is developing contacts in Thailand and China. He began teaching last year and we recently caught him sneaking some palaeontology into his lectures, something that has not happened at Stellenbosch for a very long while.
Prof. Abraham Rozendaal served a venerable term at Stellenbosch and retired at the end of 2014. For 2015, in the interim, we were fortunate to be able to appoint Prof. Franz Michael Meyer (Head of the Department of Mineralogy and Economic Geology, RWTH Aachen University) as a guest lecturer. Michael is probably well known in South Africa for the decade he spent at Wits in the 1980s and 90s. He very effectively delivered our 2015 undergraduate and honours courses in economic geology.
Michael Meyer
Turning to the future, Dr Bjorn von der Heyden, who is South African, is our new economic geology lecturer, and joins us after a stint in the private sector, which followed his undergraduate career and 2013 PhD at Stellenbosch. As a student here, Bjorn won the GSSA's Haughton Award for the top geology Honours thesis in South Africa and he carried out much of his PhD research (on iron nano-particle mineralogy) at Princeton University in the USA. An article derived from his PhD was published in no lesser journal than Science. He then spent two years working in the South African mining industry with Exxaro Resources, contributing to their operations at Arnot and Grootegeluk coal mines, the Mayoko iron ore project and their R & D (Mineralogy) unit. He will begin his lecturing duties in 2016.
Bjorn von der Heyden
Our Earth Sciences academic staff complement is now probably the most cosmopolitan in the University. We have three Australians, two Germans, one American, one Dane, one Indian and three South Africans. Of these 6 have current NRF research ratings and we expect that several more will achieve ratings in the near future. As mentioned earlier, our next report will highlight exciting equipment developments that will allow our staff to carry out cutting-edge research.
Read the full content of the GSSA bulletin from which this text is quoted here:
http://www.gssa.org.za/wp-content/uploads/GB-Dec-2015-for-web.pdf
