Thabo Mohlala
If ever there is anyone who is a habitual winner, it should be Professor Patricia Popoola. She has just recently been listed among the few women who made it to the top 500 researchers in Africa by Scholarly Output between 2015 and 2020.
Not so long ago she was awarded a total of R3.3 Million as NEP equipment grant from the National Research Foundation (NRF) and Tshwane University of Technology (TUT), where is currently based.
Popoola is currently the metallurgical and materials engineer and full professor at the department of chemical, metallurgical and materials engineering. Her colleagues said they were not surprised by her recent accolades because she has always been an “exceptional scholar, a multi-talented woman and a perfectionist who exudes passion for research”.
Popoola is a highly decorated academic whose qualifications encompass all areas of metallurgical and materials engineering. These include a national diploma in materials technology, which deals with the study of metals, polymers, ceramics, glass and cement technology.
In addition, she has a BSc (Honours) degree in metallurgical and materials engineering; Master’s and Doctoral degrees in metallurgical engineering. She completed her Doctoral degree in physical metallurgy/laser materials deposition at TUT.
Popoola was born 54 years ago in Lagos, Nigeria but her academic career begun in 2003 at TUT as a part-time lecturer in metallurgy. Said Popoola: “My research interest lies in advanced engineering materials and surface technologies. Globally, emphasis has been placed on the development of engineering materials to address the challenges involved in technological development in our society.
As such, my research is focussed on the creation of new processes, products or systems through the development of advanced multifunctional materials. We make use of emerging state-of-the-art technologies to design and fabricate novel materials.”
Popoola was registered twice on the SciVal list. SciVal is a highly regarded web-based analytics solution that provides comprehensive access to the research performance of over 20,100 research institutions and their associated researchers from 231 nations worldwide. She is currently placed 108th on the list for 2021 outputs and number 435 for the 2020 scholarly outputs. According to SciVal record, her total scholarly output for the two years is 303; total citation is 1774 and h-index of 38.
Another outstanding achievement for Popoola is that she has mentored and supervised a number of post-graduate students. To date, she has mentored eight post-doctoral fellows, twenty-eight Masters’ and fourteen Doctoral degree graduates, amongst whom are three full professors. Most of Popoola’s students are recipients of numerous research grants and academic excellence awards.
Mentorship of students remains Popoola’s primary objective and she is admired for being an outstanding study leader. She believes that imparting skills to students is critical because it will lead to alleviation of poverty and sufferings of human kind.
Popoola’s publications have made a lot of impact and have also been widely acknowledged both locally and internationally. Furthermore, her works have received high viewership and citations by different authors within the research community.
