FABIans gathered in the Sanlam Auditorium on 15 January to celebrate the opening of the new academic year. It was then off to have the traditional group photo taken before enjoying a buffet breakfast in the FABI courtyard. It has already been a busy start to the year with both Marthin Tarigan and Nam Pham presenting their Prestige Seminars the previous week that marked the successful completion of their PhD degrees.

Several guests attended the opening including University of Pretoria Registrar, Prof. Caroline Nicholson and University of Pretoria Executive Director, Prof. Carolina Koornhof as well as member of the FABI stakeholders.

FABI Director Prof. Bernard Slippers reflected on the past year when FABI celebrated 25 years of research excellence and played a video clips with short excerpts from some of the presenters at the FABI 25 Symposium held at Future Africa on 17 November. The key messages from these was that FABI was a world-class research establishment driven by a strong passionate team that leads the way in transdisciplinary research at the University of Pretoria.