Stellenbosch University's (SU) Dr Taboka Chalebgwa has won the AIMS-Fields-Perimeter Africa postdoctoral fellowship, which offers him a one-year postdoctoral position at the prestigious Fields Institute for Research in Mathematical Sciences in Canada.

Dr Chalebgwa, who received his PhD in Mathematics during the April 2019 graduation ceremony this week, says he has been greatly inspired by his study leader and senior lecturer in mathematics at SU, Dr Gareth Boxall: “His mentorship not only led to my growth as an aspiring mathematician, I picked up a few attitudinal virtues as well."

Growing up in Botswana, he says his decision to later study mathematics can be traced to his high school days where he prided himself upon performing well in maths.

After completing a BSc degree in mathematics at the University of Gaborone in Botswana, he successfully applied to become part of the African Institute for Mathematical Science's (AIMS) programme in South Africa. He was then awarded a post-AIMS bursary to pursue an MSc in mathematics under Prof Florian Breuer at SU, with Dr Boxall as co-supervisor. After Prof Breuer left to take up a position in Australia, Taboka continued with his PhD under Dr Boxall's supervision.

With a doctoral dissertation entitled “Nevanlinna theory and rational values of meromorphic functions", it is no easy task to explain the nature of his work in layman's terms. According to Dr Boxall, Taboka's work forms part of a general project of showing that, for certain functions, input-output pairs of numbers which are both rational are in some sense scarce: “In fact, for some functions it seems unlikely that a rational input will ever lead to a rational output, but this can be very difficult to prove."

For the near future, the 28-year old plans to remain in academia, working on projects within the international community.

On the photo above, Dr Taboka Chalegbwa. Photo: Stefan Els