Congratulations to UJ postgraduate students, Dorcas Lekganyane and Ryan Orton, for excelling at the 43rd Annual Conference of the South African Association of Botanists (SAAB) which was held in January at the University of the Western Cape.

UJ applauded the duo in November 2016 when they delivered the Best Masters and Best Honours presentations respectively at the Botany and Plant Biotechnology Department’s Postgraduate Research Symposium. History repeated itself at SAAB 2017 with Orton winning a cash prize and a certificate for the best oral paper presented by an Honours student.

Not only did Lekganyane win a cash prize and certificate for the best oral paper by a Masters student, she also scooped the SAAB Best Young Scientist Award for the best oral paper delivered by a young botanist under the age of 30.

“They’ve worked hard and I’m very proud of them,” said their lecturer and Director of UJ’s African Centre for DNA Barcoding, Prof Michelle van der Bank. The department is also is also proud of Courtney Long, its undergraduate student who received the conference award for Best Systematics Poster.