Funeka Nkosi

Funeka Nkosi is a PhD student at the CSIR and registered with Wits University. She has a BSc (2012) and BSc honours in applied chemistry (2013), both from Wits, and graduated from UP in 2015 with an MSc in chemistry cum laude.

Nkosi’s PhD studies are aimed at improving the performance of lithium-ion batteries. These batteries are used in mobile phones, laptops, cameras and electric cars. Her PhD is focused on manganese oxide-based battery materials such as lithium manganese nickel cobalt aluminium oxide, and lithium manganese oxide cathode materials, as they are cheap, easy to prepare and perform well. This research is inspired by the abundance of manganese in South Africa.

Nkosi won the CSIR master’s degree student excellence award in 2016. She has a patent on the strategic deployment of microwave irradiation to solve the problem of capacity fade in lithium manganese oxide spinel cathode materials and has published four research papers in international peer-reviewed journals.

Nkosi has presented her research at national and international conferences. She won awards for her presentations at the 5th CSIR Emerging Researchers’ Symposium and at the Department of Science and Technology-National Research Foundation Nanotechnology Symposium. She has also visited universities abroad to broaden her research experience.

In 2016, she was a semi-finalist in the FameLab competition, and won the Science Today postgraduate science writing competition. In 2017, she was selected as one of the young scientists to represent South Africa at the prestigious 67th Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting in Germany, and was recognised in the Mail & Guardian’s annual 200 Young South Africans supplement.