FABI’s Annual Meeting for the Society for the Presentation of Outrageous Facts (SPOOF) on 25 July revealed some new and fantastical findings from the past year’s research. This year’s theme was the well-known boardgame Cluedo where the characters (Miss Scarlet, Professor Plum, Mrs Peacock, Reverend Green and Colonel Mustard and Mrs White) solve a murder mystery by following clues.

The FABI Social Club, under the able leadership of Melandré van Lill, worked hard to ensure the event was a resounding success for the 200 guests – even the dinner menu was matched to the characters of the boardgame. This year FABIans also had to solve the mystery of the identity of the villain known as the Black Cap. Detective Mike Whiterot returned to try find out who was behind the mysterious disappearance of several valuable fungal cultures in the FABI Fungal Collection. Several suspects were flagged in Case Files he shared with FABIans in the weeks leading up to SPOOF to try identifying the mysterious Black Cap. In the end Vida Burger correctly identified the identity of the villain as none other than Morné Booij-Liewes!

This year’s presentations included findings on how hair colour and dress sense changes for students and supervisors alike. Others included training a fungus to do your Honours project, shedding light on the secret life of pipettes, the relationship between students and AI and even engineering the perfect student!

SPOOF is nothing without the awards and after an online vote, the awards were presented to the winners. The hotly contested Best Dressed Female and Best Dressed Male Awards went to Simoné Bornman and Nam Pham respectively.

The Best Spoof Presentation went to Chanel Thomas and Melandré van Lill, and they also won the Best Abstract Award. The Best SPOOF Video was Sydney Cohen, while the first person to correctly guess the SPOOF theme was Chanel Thomas.

2025 SPOOF Presentations:

Surf’s up: Evaluating wave preferences in particles.

Can a fungus do my Honours project?

The winning SPOOF Presentation.

Update on our latest research findings on the deployment and integration of systematic approaches for the independent cross-kingdom delineation of unrelated species for further taxonomic confusion and impedimentum as well as report back on the 2^nd International Conference on Biochemistry & Biotechnology held in Malpensa, Solbiate Olona, Italy.

The secret life of pipettes.

Of prompts and perils: An investigative mockumentary into Student-AI relationships in academia.

The perfect student: Can they be engineered?

The breaking point of postgraduate students.