Just as she heard that her thesis had received the thumbs-up, master's student Tsungai Jongwe put her organisational skills to the test to host her own academic seminar, the final requirement of her two-year Thabo Mbeki Leadership in Africa Scholarship.

At the event, Jongwe's supervisor in the Division of Medical Microbiology, Dr Heidi Segal, gave a potted introduction to her group's work on how bacteria become resistant to antimicrobials. Following that, Jongwe ran through her own research on Acinetobacter baumannii, specifically the molecular nitty-gritty of this disease-causing bacteria's growing resistance to antibiotics.

She'd have liked a bigger turnout, but the talks and Q&A afterwards kept her on her toes, said Jongwe. "It raised ideas I may not have thought about before."