Title of the Monitoring air quality over South Africa from Space

Dr. Lerato Shikwambana is currently a Senior Scientist at the South African National Space Agency (SANSA) in the Earth Observation directorate. He has an NRF rating and holds an Honorary Research Fellow position at the University of the Witwatersrand under the School of Geography, Archaeology and Environmental Studies. He completed his undergraduate Bachelor of Science degree majoring in Maths and Physics at Wits. He then completed his Bachelor of Science with Honours degree in Physics at Wits. The love for physics let him to pursue and complete a Master in Science degree in Physics at Wits University. The major focus of his Master’s degree was on using lasers for the synthesis of new materials. Laser physics became one of Lerato’s interests and decided to apply the knowledge of lasers to study the atmosphere and space. He enrolled and completed a Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D) degree in Physics at the University of KwaZulu Natal in 2017. Lerato began his journey at SANSA as a postdoctoral research fellow at the space science directorate upon completing his PhD in 2017. Dr Shikwambana’s research interest is on studying atmospheric emissions using satellites, in-situ instruments, and model data. Other interests include climate change, meteorology and atmospheric dynamics.  Dr Shikwambana has published over 35 articles in the topic and is also supervising postgraduate students.