My contribution to science and its impact on society
In my view, advancing science and its impact on society have four pillars: 1) improving the link between science and society, 2) generating knowledge in line with the needs of the Society, 3) strengthening scientific network, and 4) developing scientific capacity.The Forum in African Marine Science that we recently created(August 2016)was built around these four objectives. Besides being an inaugural member and raising awareness around the initiative (e.g. scientific article), I am also contributing by improving scientific network and capacity. I have been training more than 20 postgraduate students since the completion of my PhD, always giving them the opportunity to explore their potential. I often take opportunities to develop discussion groups around concepts, methods, theoretical or empirical questions with students and academics from other teams or other departments. I have been committed to advance the knowledge of my peers through a journal club and a series of workshop in evolutionary biology at the University of Pretoria.