{"id":522,"date":"2021-02-10T18:42:16","date_gmt":"2021-02-10T16:42:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogsdev.sun.ac.za\/eucxylo\/?p=522"},"modified":"2021-02-10T18:42:16","modified_gmt":"2021-02-10T16:42:16","slug":"letitia-and-gugu-arrive-at-an-exciting-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.sun.ac.za\/eucxylo\/2021\/02\/10\/letitia-and-gugu-arrive-at-an-exciting-time\/","title":{"rendered":"[:en]Letitia and Gugu arrive at an exciting time![:]"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>[:en]<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Two new members join <span style=\"color: #ff9900\">EucXylo<\/span>, and the work is going full steam ahead!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>We are pleased to announce the appointment of <a href=\"https:\/\/blogsdev.sun.ac.za\/eucxylo\/the-team\/#letitia-schoeman\">Dr Letitia Schoeman<\/a>, who has joined the <span style=\"color: #ff9900\">EucXylo<\/span> team as a postdoc in February 2021. Letitia comes from a food science and horticultural background, having previously been appointed as a postdoc at the Department of Horticultural Sciences, where her research focus was based on using X-ray micro- and nano-CT to characterise and quantify mealiness disorder in pears. She has an interest and passion for using non-destructive techniques, such as X-ray CT, to perform microstructural analyses. Letitia\u2019s research will focus on employing non-destructive approaches to characterise and quantify developmental processes in differentiating xylem in eucalypts. She is an avid baker, who also enjoys camping and playing tennis.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_527\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-527\" style=\"width: 562px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-527\" src=\"http:\/\/blogsdev.sun.ac.za\/eucxylo\/files\/2021\/02\/Letitia-CT-scanner2-300x245.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"562\" height=\"459\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-527\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Letitia with one of our little eucs by the nano-CT instrument<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>We are also pleased to welcome our fourth Ph.D. student, <a href=\"https:\/\/blogsdev.sun.ac.za\/eucxylo\/the-team\/#gugu-gama\">Ms Gugu Gama<\/a> to the <span style=\"color: #ff9900\">EucXylo<\/span> team, who has also joined us in February 2021. Gugu has just completed her M.Sc. in plant anatomy and molecular systematics and plant evolution, thus having a strong background in wood and bark anatomy, particularly in lianescent species that show uncommon cambial variance in the genus <em>Grewia<\/em>. Gugu is still finalising her Ph.D. topic, but the first facet of her study will be to investigate the relationship between growth and climate in <em>Eucalyptus cladocalyx<\/em>.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_541\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-541\" style=\"width: 567px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-541\" src=\"http:\/\/blogsdev.sun.ac.za\/eucxylo\/files\/2021\/02\/Gugu-Nursery10-1-300x209.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"567\" height=\"395\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-541\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Gugu with a healthy crop of young eucs in our Nursery<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>While we are pleased to have gained two valuable members, the arrival of Letitia and Gugu has also come at an exciting time in <span style=\"color: #ff9900\">EucXylo<\/span>. Our phenomenological trial in the nursery is in full swing, with it being expected that all the sensors (dendrometers, soil moisture probes, sap flow sensors etc) will be installed within the next two weeks. Additionally, Letitia and Gugu\u2019s arrival couldn\u2019t have happened at a better time, as both our laboratories are now refurbished and our microscope room is almost ready for use. We\u2019ve seen a steady influx of data from our current students, as <a href=\"https:\/\/blogsdev.sun.ac.za\/eucxylo\/the-team\/#alta-saunders\">Alta<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/blogsdev.sun.ac.za\/eucxylo\/the-team\/#chris-tonkin\">Chris<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/blogsdev.sun.ac.za\/eucxylo\/the-team\/#rafael-keret\">Raf<\/a> have been busy with their experiments, while <a href=\"https:\/\/blogsdev.sun.ac.za\/eucxylo\/the-team\/#gabi-sibiya\">Gabi<\/a> has handed in her M.Sc. thesis and <a href=\"https:\/\/blogsdev.sun.ac.za\/eucxylo\/the-team\/#oluwaseun-gakenou\">Oluwaseun <\/a>has made some considerable progress with R-3PG. Overall, it seems that 2021 is going to be an exciting and productive year for <span style=\"color: #ff9900\">EucXylo<\/span>.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Welcome to the team Letitia and Gugu, and <strong>happy 2021<\/strong> to all our followers out there!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>[:]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[:en] Two new members join EucXylo, and the work is going full steam ahead! We are pleased to announce the appointment of Dr Letitia Schoeman, who has joined the EucXylo team as a postdoc in February 2021. Letitia comes from a food science and&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10084,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[65293],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-522","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-team-information"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sun.ac.za\/eucxylo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/522","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sun.ac.za\/eucxylo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sun.ac.za\/eucxylo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sun.ac.za\/eucxylo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10084"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sun.ac.za\/eucxylo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=522"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sun.ac.za\/eucxylo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/522\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sun.ac.za\/eucxylo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=522"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sun.ac.za\/eucxylo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=522"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sun.ac.za\/eucxylo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=522"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}