{"id":6103,"date":"2021-07-01T09:13:38","date_gmt":"2021-07-01T09:13:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/recirculate\/?p=6103"},"modified":"2021-07-06T13:54:25","modified_gmt":"2021-07-06T13:54:25","slug":"spotlight-thapelo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/recirculate\/2021\/07\/spotlight-thapelo\/","title":{"rendered":"Spotlight interview &#8211; Thapelo Shomana"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"padding: 12px;background-color: #f0f0f0\">\n<p><em><strong>Thapelo Shomana <\/strong><\/em>is a graduate researcher and teaching instructor at the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.biust.ac.bw\/\">Botswana International University of Science and Technology (BIUST)<\/a> coordinating various modules in the Chemical, Materials &amp; Metallurgical Engineering department. He also works as a research project coordinator for the &#8220;Beneficiation of Botswana coal for metallurgical purposes; waste plastic pyrolysis; design of poultry litter plant&#8221; project.<\/p>\n<p>To mark the Sir Seretse Khama Day, a holiday in Botswana to commemorates the first President of Botswana on the anniversary of his birth on this day in 1921, Dr Akanimo Odon recently interviewed Thapelo to find out a little more about him, his experience with RECIRCULATE and how he celebrates Sir Seretse Khama Day.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><em><strong>Please briefly share with us your professional history.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p>Some of my responsibilities include planning and execution of various U\/G modules in the department; process control, process modelling and simulation, materials science, hydrometallurgy, mineral processing etc. I also supervise undergraduate and postgraduate research projects (most projects are carbon-based) and write research grant proposals. Finally, I work with external partners for collaboration such as <a href=\"https:\/\/www.uz.ac.zw\/\">University of Zimbabwe<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bgi.org.bw\/\">Botswana Geoscience Institute<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/galanegold.com\/operations\/mupane\/\">Mupane Gold Mine<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mining-technology.com\/projects\/mowana\/\">Mowana Copper Mine<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mcm.co.bw\/\">Morupule Mine<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.debswana.com\/\">Debswana<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bih.co.bw\/\">Botswana Innovation Hub<\/a> etc.<\/p>\n<p><em><strong>How did you hear about the RECIRCULATE project and what has been your experience engaging with the project so far?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p>I firstly heard about the RECIRCULATE project through a work colleague. Since my first training, most I have identified an untapped value in knowledge exchange and here are my few applications of tools learnt so far:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Invitation from a process engineer from Mupane Gold Mine to give a lecture to my class of Hydrometallurgy students last year.<\/li>\n<li>Invitation from an electrical engineer from Debswana to give an \u2018engineer\u2019s industrial perspectives\u2019 lecture to 230 1<sup>st<\/sup> year engineering students early this year.<\/li>\n<li>Taking 31 mineral processing students on a process plant tour at Mowana Copper Mine in June this year.<\/li>\n<li>Forging and fully utilizing links between the BIUST and University of Zimbabwe and Botswana Geoscience Institute and Botswana Innovation Hub on beneficiation of Botswana coal for metallurgical purposes.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><em><strong>How are you celebrating or how will you be celebrating the Botswana Independence Day? <\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p>Taking some time off and spending quality time with my daughter.<\/p>\n<p><em><strong>What would you say are the two biggest challenge you face in Botswana in your line of work?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p>Lack of research funding.<\/p>\n<p><em><strong>Are there opportunities you think can be explored bearing in mind these challenges you highlighted?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p>Yes, the creation of a national research funding body and reserve at least 3 % of the GDP for research related activities if we are to truly experience our economic diversification. There is an opportunity to also challenge the private sector to drive research activities.<\/p>\n<p><em><strong>Any final thoughts about your country Botswana?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p>There is a pool of untapped local capacity which will take the country to a new dimension if motivated and given the right tools. The opportunities are limitless.<\/p>\n<p>All articles in <strong>The FLOW<\/strong> are published under a <a href=\"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-nd\/4.0\/\">Creative Commons \u2014 Attribution\/No derivatives license,<\/a> for details please read the <a href=\"http:\/\/recirculate.global\/the-flow\/guidelines-for-re-publishing-the-flow-articles\/\">RECIRCULATE re-publishing guidelines<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p class=\"excerpt\">Thapelo Shomana is a graduate researcher and teaching instructor at the Botswana International University of Science and Technology (BIUST) coordinating various modules in the Chemical, Materials &amp; Metallurgical Engineering department. He also works as a research project coordinator for the &#8220;Beneficiation of Botswana coal for metallurgical purposes; waste plastic pyrolysis; design of poultry litter plant&#8221; [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1370,"featured_media":6109,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[53,44],"tags":[52],"class_list":["post-6103","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-spotlight","category-the-flow","tag-spotlight"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/recirculate\/files\/2021\/07\/thapelo.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9hFf1-1Ar","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/recirculate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6103","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/recirculate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/recirculate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/recirculate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1370"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/recirculate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6103"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/recirculate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6103\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6157,"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/recirculate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6103\/revisions\/6157"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/recirculate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6109"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/recirculate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/recirculate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/recirculate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}