Boitumelo Mashangoane, PhD (UP)

Matriarch.....Kgoshigadi....Ndlunkulu....👑 #PAST3AMSQUAD. #PhDlife Proud Nerd 🤓. PhD Chemical Engineering @UPTuks 🤓Proudly South African 🇿🇦

[Boitumelo Mashangoane, PhD (UP) @Rise_OfPhoenix]

@uNkuluh Lmao 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 It's rough there by the commission 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

[Nothing Matters @NothingMattx]

When time is right, everything will go to it's place 🙌🙌

[Boitumelo Mashangoane, PhD (UP) @Rise_OfPhoenix]

@Gugu_Noggy I love your sense of humour 🤣 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

[Boitumelo Mashangoane, PhD (UP) @Rise_OfPhoenix]

@Milla__K Lmao I'm wailing 🤣 😂 💀

[Mphoza⚘ @Vho_Mpho]

My daughter, Chess Junior Master Atlehang Malemane, has qualified to represent South Africa 🇿🇦 internationally. Please help her to get there 🙏🏾

[Boitumelo Mashangoane, PhD (UP) @Rise_OfPhoenix]

@Thekelo_ @DasenThathiah 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

[Salome Maswime @MrsMaswime]

Excited to start my next chapter 🙌🏾 #Witsie
https://t.co/ZamdokVmJF

[Science girl @sciencegirl]

That fresh smell after rain is called petrichor.

When raindrops hit dry soil, they release plant oils and geosmin from bacteria, creating that rich, earthy scent.

[Boitumelo Mashangoane, PhD (UP) @Rise_OfPhoenix]

@ndi_thendo Spot on 🤞

[Boitumelo Mashangoane, PhD (UP) @Rise_OfPhoenix]

@ta_kweila @SbuMpungose Tjoweeeee 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

[Desire 2 @namdeee_]

𝙽̶𝚊̶𝚖̶𝚊̶𝚣̶𝚣̶𝚒̶:̶ ̶𝚃̶𝚑̶𝚎̶ ̶𝚐̶𝚒̶𝚛̶𝚕̶ ̶𝚠̶𝚑̶𝚘̶ ̶𝚋̶𝚎̶𝚊̶𝚝̶ ̶𝚕̶𝚎̶𝚞̶𝚔̶𝚎̶𝚖̶𝚒̶𝚊̶ ̶

Namazzi: the girl who got her first class honors degree! 🤭

Philipians 1:6 🤍

[Cathy@cathitex @Cathynammy]

Here we are. PhD in Mechanical Engineering. Proud mother, wife, employer, employee and Drrrrrrrrrrr

[Khanyi Magubane @Khanyi_Magubane]

Congratulations! 🎉🎉 What a great achievement! And yes to #lifelonglearning I went back to school recently at age 44 and I got my MA in Political Studies. Now I'm gearing up for my PhD which I'm hoping to get before I turn 50! 🎉🎉

[Vukosi Marivate 🇿🇦🚀📊 @vukosi]

I’m honoured to have been selected to serve on this panel. I look forward to continuing to share experiences and perspectives from across the African continent, and to learning from my fellow panelists.

Learn more about the panel https://t.co/gJy7aBXqUM

[Anna Schueth, PhD @SchuethAnna]

I didn`t start my academic career until I was 30.
I didn`t obtain my PhD until I was 35.
At 17, I almost dropped out of high-school.
At 20, I thought my life was over.
At 42, I signed my permanent contract & became assistant professor.
At 44, I know it`s just the beginning. ❤️

[Kekius Maximus @Kekius_Sage]

I’m 54, a physicist, have spent decades using mathematics to study the universe, solve problems, and build things.

If your work touches numbers, now or in the future, and you want to learn math properly, this thread shows a from-the-ground-up math you’ll actually need:

[Niko McCarty. @NikoMcCarty]

I spent 1.5 years at MIT co-designing a new undergrad program in Genetic Engineering.

The full report is now publicly available. It describes what needs to be built to educate the next generation, and why.

Appendix II includes notes from interviews with 100+ biotech company CEOs and scientists about what they look for in new hires.

Appendix III includes a huge analysis of all existing curricula in biotechnology and genetic engineering globally. It also features dozens of photos from my visits to biotechnology centers across the U.S., Europe, and Asia.

Hopefully this will be a useful resource for educators looking to adapt or expand their curriculums, too.

[Niko McCarty. @NikoMcCarty]

30 Underrated Ideas in Biotech (#6)

Engineered organisms are everywhere, but they are usually "contained." Engineered cells make many of our medicines, for example, but they are isolated to bioreactors.

Some of the more "sci-fi" visions of biotechnology -- like cleaning up an oil spill that spans many square miles of ocean, or using microbes at scale to degrade plastics -- require that we first release engineered organisms *without* containment.

Of course, there are strict regulations preventing this. Getting approval to release a microbe into the wild, without containment, is extremely difficult.

The regulatory pathway for genetically-engineered microbes is divided across the EPA, USDA, and FDA. Each agency has jurisdiction depending on the intended use. Biopesticides fall to the EPA, while other agricultural products go to the USDA, and ingestible microbes fall under the province of the FDA. Anything that DOES NOT easily fit into these categories, such as environmental biosensors or microbes engineered to clean up oil spills in the ocean, is instead lumped under the EPA’s Toxic Substances Control Act, or TSCA.

Regardless of your stance on engineered microbes, TSCA is not a good regulation.

It regulates genetically engineered microbes based on the METHOD by which they were engineered, rather than the product itself. Any microbe containing DNA from another genus — say, moving a gene from Escherichia coli into Pseudomonas putida — is flagged by TSCA and unlikely to get approval, even if researchers can prove that the product is safe. So whereas engineered crops can get approval if researchers provide compelling data from field trials and safety tests, there is no such option for the organisms that get lumped into TSCA.

More than 200 TSCA submissions were filed between 1987 and 2018; none of those submissions have led to a commercialized product. Therefore, most companies that want to release a genetically-engineered microbe find ways to skirt around it.

Pivot Bio, for example, sells genetically-engineered microbes that colonize plant roots and convert atmospheric nitrogen (N₂) into ammonia (NH₃), a chemical form that plants can use. This reduces the amount of fertilizer needed for a field (a good thing!) thus decreasing the leaching of fertilizer byproducts into water.

Pivot Bio sidestepped some regulatory hurdles by avoiding the transfer of genes from one species to another; they simply remodeled their organism’s existing genome. The company still has to get USDA approval to ship its product across state lines, but that is a simpler regulatory hurdle to get over.

If we want to see more "sci-fi" biotech in the world, we should rewrite TSCA and build a clear path for companies to file for approval based on actual field trials & safety testing.

[Dr. Émile P. Torres (they/them) @xriskology]

I do it because I worked unbelievably hard to get that honorific. I tell my students: having a PhD means only one thing: that you--statistically speaking--know more than almost anyone else in the world about one or two narrow topics (and that you worked hard to achieve that