School of Life Sciences

Dr Phikolomzi Matikinca holds a PhD in Zoology (Marine Biology, Climate Change and Coastal Carbonate Chemistry). For his PhD studies he was based at the Robinson Lab, The Marine Lab and the DSI-NRF Centre of Excellence for Invasion Biology (CIB) at the Department of Botany and Zoology, Stellenbosch University (SU), South Africa. His PhD focused on the implications of the near-future changes in temperature and carbonate chemistry along the South African west coast for fouling organisms in the context of climate change. He holds a MSc in Climate Change and Development from University of Cape Town (UCT), BSc Honours in Environmental Sciences (Cum Laude) and BSc in Environmental Sciences and Geology, both from Rhodes University (RU). His research areas span across Invasion Biology, Marine Ecology, Coastal Carbonate Chemistry, Climate Change, Socio-Ecological Systems, Biostatistics, Machine Learning, and Data Science and Analytics.

He is the first recipient of the John and Maureen Summers Memorial Scholarship, a member of the Golden Key International Honour Society, a recipient of Full Academic Colours award (Rhodes University), and has won the international travel grant award for the best PhD presentation at the Annual Research Meeting hosted by the DSI-NRF Centre of Excellence for Invasion Biology (CIB) at Stellenbosch University in 2020.