The vision I have for my future is one in the area of environmental management. Whether working in a research and development laboratory, consulting in industry or sampling in the field, I see myself drawing from the wealth of expertise to which I have been exposed throughout my academic career both in South Africa and in the United States of America. I would like to be involved in setting up and running research centre, bringing academia and industry together in an effort to advance the field of environmental biotechnology while at the same time uplifting communities through environmental awareness programmes and improving social and living conditions by providing essential and affordable facilities.

My areas of study span understanding freshwater and brackish eukaryotic algae and cyanobacteria and their physiology and metabolism, to biological wastewater treatment, to drinking water distribution systems and biofilms associated with them. I have studied various aspects of cyanobacteria since my B.Sc. Honours (UPE, 1998), initially looking at the spatial distribution and abundance of toxic cyanobacteria in the Eastern Cape, South Africa and then in my Masters degree (Rhodes, 1999) moving on to look at environmental stress manipulation of algae and cyanobacteria and the potential exploitation of metabolic functioning to enhance tertiary wastewater treatment of domestic sewage.