Snakes alive! Foreign postdocs flock toWits

More than 200 postdoctoral students from 41 countries are involved in research at the University of the Witwatersrand.

The research fellows include 12 from the United States, 13 from the United Kingdom and 20 from India, according to Wits.

Among them is Frenchman Xavier Glaudas, who catches snakes for a living. He specialises in studying factors that affect animals and his favourite creatures are snakes, particularly vipers.

“There are about 300 to 350 species of Viperidae in the wild and their common feature is that they are all venomous,” he said.

Glaudas, who completed his PhD in the US, was appointed as a postdoctoral research fellow in the university’s school of animal, plant and environmental studies under Professor Graham Alexander.

He is nearing the end of his three-year research project to determine whether the availability of food plays a role in the birth rates of puff adders.

Rob Drennan, a postdoctoral co-ordinator at Wits, said many students from the rest of Africa and abroad opted to do their postdoctoral research there because it was renowned as a “high-quality, research-intensive university”. He added: “World university rankings help to build this perception.”

He said candidates must hold a doctorate and are required to have published research findings. “Their area of research must match with the potential host (or mentor) at Wits. This is because the postdoc and the host collaborate on joint research projects.”

He believes Wits’s postdoctoral experience matches that of Ivy League universities in the US and the UK.

“I am sure that the Ivy Leagues may offer some things we cannot afford but being in South Africa, and in Johannesburg, gives our postdocs access to a diverse and complex cosmopolitan society and environment that would be difficult to find in other places around the world.”

And, with adequate funding, the institution could easily take on another 100 postdocs each year.