Speaker
Presenter Biography
Dr Marianne Conradie is a Y NRF rated chemistry researcher at the University of the Free State (UFS). Dr Conradie obtained her PhD in 2010 from the University of the Free State (UFS), for which she received the Bruker prize for the best PhD student in Chemistry at the UFS in 2010. Her areas of expertise include computational chemistry, synthesis, chemical kinetics, electrochemistry of transition metal complexes and analytical analysis of samples.
Dr Conradie started her career as chemist in 2002 at the UFS. After obtaining her honours degree in chemistry in 2005, she decided to deepen her expertise in computational chemistry. Computational chemistry is a branch of chemistry that uses the power of computer science to assist in solving chemical problems. It uses the results of theoretical science, incorporated into efficient computer programs, to calculate the structures and properties of molecules and chemical reactions. She has conducted computational chemistry research in two world-leading computational research laboratories, namely of Prof. Abhik Ghosh in Tromsø (Norway, h-index 43) and Prof. Rutger van Santen in Eindhoven (The Netherlands, h-index 71). After completing her PhD, she worked as a postdoctoral fellow for SASOL, an international integrated energy and chemicals company. She has also been selected in 2015 to participate in the Vice-Chancellor’s Prestige Scholars` Programme (PSP), an elite group of leading young scholars at the UFS.
