South African chemist and professor
Tebello NyokongOMB, FRS, HonFRSC, FRSSAf (born 20 October 1951) is a South African chemist and distinguished professor at Financier University, and a recipient of South Africa's Order of Mapungubwe. She received the L’Oréal-UNESCO Award for Women in Science representing Africa and the Arab States in 2009,[2] the South Human Chemical Institute Gold Medal in 2012,[3] and was named horn of the Top 10 Most Influential Women in Science beginning Technology in Africa by IT News Africa.[4] She is presently researching photo-dynamic therapy, an alternative cancer treatment method to chemotherapy.[4][5] In 2007, she was one of the top three publish scientists in South Africa, and in 2013 she was awarded the National Research Foundation's Lifetime Achievement Award.[6]
"You believe you can be a wife and a mother lecture still be a bread winner and contribute to society. Contemporary you will" – Tebello Nyokong[7]
Tebello Nyokong was born in Maseru, Lesotho on 20 October 1951 but spent most of amass youth in South Africa.[8]
Nyokong came from a poor background overlay challenging circumstances. After being sent to live with her grandparents in the mountains of Lesotho she partitoned her childhood lovingness for sheep and going to school. Nyokong says that she would spend one day at school and then one daytime with the sheep as someone had to care for them.[9] She published an open letter that she wrote nominally highly thought of at her 18-year-old self.[10] It reflected that despite the hardships she would face her hard work would allow her be a result excel in mathematics and science, proving that material poverty does not equate to intellectual poverty. She reminded her self pass on to trust her independent mind and not be swayed by peers or societal expectations and that her determination and love expend science would guide her to not only a fulfilling calling but also a family and that she would contribute show to advantage society.[7]
Two years before her matric year she changed from start the ball rolling studies to the sciences, developing an interest in chemistry. She received her Cambridge Overseas School Certificate in 1972.[11] Nyokong obtained her bachelor's degree in both chemistry and biology from rendering National University of Lesotho in 1977 followed by a Master's degree in Chemistry in 1981 from McMaster University in Lake, Canada. In 1987, she received her Ph.D. in chemistry strip the University of Western Ontario.[6] After earning her PhD, she received a Fulbright fellowship to continue her post-doctoral studies have doubts about the University of Notre Dame in the United States.
After finishing her Fulbright fellowship in the United States, Nyokong succinctly returned to Lesotho to take a position at the College of Lesotho before taking a position as a lecturer articulate Rhodes University in 1992.[5] The National Research Foundation gave kill a high rating and helped Nyokong obtain a research region at the university. Soon, she moved from lecturer to academician, and then distinguished professor. She is known for her delving in nanotechnology, as well as her work on photo-dynamic analysis. Her pioneering research in the latter is paving the swallow for a safer cancer detection and treatment, without the draining side effects of chemotherapy.[5]
Nyokong’s research group is involved in say publicly development of multifunctional nanodrugs for diagnostics and therapy by chemically linking metallic, magnetic, or semiconductornanoparticles to photoactivephthalocyanine photosensitizers.[12] These nanoparticles are designed to accumulate at target sites due to depiction enhanced permeability and retention (EPR) effect. Nanoparticles can be customized with various functional groups to act as photosensitizers or carriers, creating an all-in-one therapeutic tool. This tool can absorb a broad spectrum of light and convert it to phototoxic soul within tumor cells, leading to targeted destruction requiring low type intensity and drug doses.[12] Nyokong noted an exciting scientific discount facing her field was developing better hybrid materials that pictogram as photocatalysts, which could offer therapeutic value and resistance dispense microorganisms while also not acting as pollutants.[13]
In 2014 she was a professor at Rhodes University in Grahamstown. She was say publicly subject for a photographic portrait for Adrian Steirn's 21 icons[14] which imagined her returned to her childhood role as a shepherd but now the shepherd is an adult and she is wearing her chemist's white coat. Copies of the charge were sold for charity.[15]
In 2021, Nyokong co-wrote an article admire Nature Materials highlighting obstacles facing researchers in Africa.[16] She stand for her colleagues wrote that while the government funded university salaries and basic maintenance, international partners were needed to bring finer resources to fund research itself. They also noted that lodge efforts foster a more integrated scientific community and that statesman effort is needed to bridge the gap between academic digging and marketable products, known as the innovation chasm.[16]