NRI PhD student, Cedric Maforimbo, has won the Society of Chemical Industry’s (SCI) Sydney Andrew Scholarship. Cedric joined NRI in February of 2021 for his PhD programme in Agriculture, Health and Environment and the scholarship will supplement his current Food and Nutrition Security Initiative (FaNSI) Scholarship.
The funding will, in particular, go towards Cedric’s training and execution of the nutritional chemical analysis of pollen and nectar, as part of his PhD research entitled, “More Bees for More Beans; Harnessing Pollination for Promoting Yield in Legumes (HaPPY Legumes) on the Slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania”.
The Sydney Andrew Scholarship supports up to ten PhD students per year, studying projects in emerging areas of agriculture and the chemical industry. Having been awarded this scholarship, Cedric joins the SCI Scholars’ programme, and gains membership of SCI, with access to SCI journals and wider networks within industry and academia.
Cedric says: “Agriculture and the chemical industry have historically focused their collaboration on increasing yields by developing more
potent chemical fertilizers and pesticides. However, emerging areas of agriculture and the chemical industry have more recently focused on nature-based yield enhancement, and my research seeks to contribute towards this.”
“Through funding from the SCI Sydney Andrew Scholarship, I will use chemistry to better understand the impact of varying non-crop habitat management models – the ways in which smallholder farmers manage the immediate natural margins of their fields and the wider landscape - on the relationship between, and the interaction of, pollinating bees and bean crops. My ultimate goal is to improve existing or formulate new non-crop habitat management models that harness pollination services for improved bean yields for smallholder farmers.”
The award was named after Dr Sydney Andrew, an industrial chemical engineer who “exemplified the SCI mission of encouraging the application of chemical and related sciences for public benefit.” He bequeathed a substantial share of his estate to SCI for the support of “scientific innovation on the theme of neglected science.”
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