Name: Walter Nevondo
Position: Lecturer
Contact: wnevondo@uwc.ac.za
Tel no: +27 21 959 2817
Research project:
Delivering on metagenomic promises
Who am I:
I was born and raised in Limpopo province, Africa’s Eden and I completed my undergraduate studies at the University of Limpopo. After graduating my BSc degree (honours), I worked at Oleoresin production company, PaprieX Pty Ltd, as a laboratory analyst. My responsibilities were mainly QA and QC. Although the industrial environment was exciting and challenging, I left three years later to enrolled for M.sc in Biotechnology at the University of the Western Cape. My thesis focused on Nickel and cobalt uptake systems such as ATP-type transporters and related permeases. I continued to do my Ph.D. focusing on in vitro expression systems and high-throughput screening of mixed microbial DNA using FACS. While writing my Ph.D. thesis, I joined the University of Cape Town, Pathology department as a scientific officer. My primary project was to estimate the time for the establishment of the HIV-1 latent reservoir. This was a Miseq intensive project which requires multiple viral RNA extractions, RT-PCR and deep sequencing. I was also sizing HIV-1 latent reservoir, both at DNA and mRNA level, in African woman using ddPCR. After almost two years at UCT, I re-join UWC (IMBM) as a lecture. My main project is to develop a high-throughput cell-free metagenomic screening platform.