Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University’s senior Zoology lecturer Dr Kwezi Mzilikazi has been selected as an honorary ambassador scientist for the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.
Dr Mzilikazi is recognised as Africa’s first black evolutionary physiologist, thanks to her ground-breaking research on how small mammals cope with challenges posed by their environment.
Her selection follows an earlier appointment when she was a Humboldt Fellow and spent a year conducting postdoctoral research at Marburg University in Germany in 2006/7.
As an honorary ambassador, Dr Mzilikazi is expected to raise awareness about the programmes and activities of the prestigious Foundation which promotes academic cooperation among scientists internationally.
As a result of her earlier work in Germany, Dr Mzilikazi set up a whole animal energetics laboratory for teaching and research purposes in the Zoology Department. This laboratory boasts a fully computerized system which can measure oxygen consumption, carbon dioxide production, water loss and activity levels in at least five individual animals (mammals, birds and reptiles) at the same time.
“By understanding the physiological responses of animals, we’ll be better able to predict how they will respond in the face of global climate change. We’ll also be able to predict which animals are most likely to be at risk and therefore identify which species require conservation priority,” she says.
In addition, she also set up a second research laboratory in which mitochondria (sources of energy) from different tissues can be isolated and their metabolic rates measured under different conditions.
This hard-working researcher has put together a surgery facility that will enable her to implant dataloggers and transmitters into animals for the purposes of body temperature monitoring, both in the laboratory and under field conditions.
Alan Straton
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