Professor Penny Govender Acting Senior Director Postgraduate School
Welcome to the Postgraduate School (PGS)
On behalf of the employees and management, we welcome you to the Postgraduate School (PGS), where we want to assist you with all things postgraduate and postdoctoral. We are here to ensure that our assistance to you will make your UJ experience a memorable one.
Our school comprises of four divisions namely, PBMR, PFM, RCD, and STATKON that work in tandem to render the best service possible. We passionately believe in our societal influence, thus we hope you will visit us and use our quiet space, the common room, to focus on your studies.
Furthermore, we provide a variety of workshops/ seminars/ trainings in physical, online, and hybrid formats to ensure that you are well informed and equipped with enough information to make your journey with us a success.
With that said, the PGS wishes you all the best for the 2023 academic year!
Over the course of more than 20 years of service to U.J, Professor Penny Govender has held a variety of fascinating and successful leadership positions. Professor Govender has also written a book entitled: Molecular Modelling of Vitamin B12 and its analogues, 11 book chapters, supervised eight postdoctoral research fellows, and graduated as a supervisor more than 20 postgraduate students (both Master’s and PhD) at UJ.
Professor Govender was recently inducted as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (FRSC) in June 2023 for her dedication to science, and in 2018 she received the Vice-Chancellor’s Distinguished Award for Most Promising Young Researcher of the Year, as well as the Faculty of Science award in the senior lecturer/lecturer category for the highest research output in 2016. Professor Govender will not only assume the duties of the Acting Senior Directors position but also continue to serve as the division’s Director of the Research and Capacity Development unit.