A career in the sciences allows young people to be at the forefront of charting the course for humanity, especially in this era of the 4th industrial revolution.
The Faculty of Science at the University of Johannesburg (UJ) is uniquely positioned to shape young minds into becoming the leaders that the country requires.
We offer qualifications in computer and numerical sciences, earth and life sciences, chemical, and physical sciences. Under the umbrella of life sciences, we offer qualifications in biochemistry, biotechnology, botany, food technology and zoology.
Our undergraduate qualifications give access to Honours degrees, followed by Masters and Doctoral qualifications in the basic science disciplines as well as in energy studies, environmental management, physiology, conservation and informatics.
Most of our Masters degrees are research-based but we do offer tutored Masters in Aquatic Health, Environmental Management and Nanoscience. We also offer multidisciplinary postgraduate qualifications and participate in joint degrees with international universities, for example the Masters programme in Sustainable Territorial Development (STeDe), an international Erasmus Mundus Joint Master Degree.
In the Faculty of Science, we focus on creating an environment that is conducive to teaching and learning, as well as generating and sharing new knowledge. We equip our postgraduate students with the necessary skills to perform ground-breaking research and to generate new knowledge in their respective fields of interest, which is why some of our postgraduate students have featured as co-authors on publications where the age of Homo naledi was divulged and when an unknown stone found in the Syrian glass desert was shown to have an extra solar origin.
Our state of the art research equipment and facilities ensures a world-class experience for staff and students and our research groups participate in international collaborations, contributing data to addressing major scientific challenges of our time; for example, improving water and food quality and developing novel medicines for ailments common to the African continent.
We have expertise in cyber security and artificial intelligence and our researchers formed part of an international collaboration that contributed data to resolving Einstein’s theory of relativity.
More recently, our academics contributed to the modelling of Covid-19 infection patterns in our country and developing software for the real-time measurement of fielding performance during a cricket match. The Faculty of Science’s primary contributions in academia therefore continues to be the products of high quality research and innovation, also evidenced by our positions in various international university subject rankings - our chemists were ranked top in Africa for four years in a row from 2018 to 2021.
The research expertise at UJ’s Faculty of Science are strengthened by the Faculty’s National Research Foundation rated staff as well as national research chairs and research centres in areas such as nanomaterials, nanotechnology for water, indigenous plant use, geo-metallurgy, DNA barcoding, chromato-graphic and atomic spectrography, ecological genomics and wildlife conservation, food security, strong materials, astro-particle physics, and plant metabolomics.
Applications for Honours, Masters and Doctoral degrees at the University of Johannesburg’s Faculty of Science open in April and close in October of each year.
However, applications have been extended to 30 November 2020, 12:00 to account for disruptions caused by Covid-19.
For more information about the qualifications that we offer, consult our postgraduate brochure, visit www.uj.ac.za/science or email us on web-science@uj.ac.za. Postgraduate students can also apply for funding for postgraduate studies through UJ’s Postgraduate School.