On Friday 1 December, FABI had the pleasure of hosting three internationally-renowned plant pathologists as part of a celebration of 100 Years of Plant Pathology at the University of Pretoria. The visitors, Prof. Paul Teng of the National Institute of Education at Nanyang Technological University (Singapore), Prof. Sarah Gurr and Prof. Gero Steinberg both of the University of Exeter, were visiting South Africa to attend the 3^rd Global Food Security Conference being held Cape Town. During their visit, Prof. Teng, Gurr and Steinberg led a round table discussion with a group of FABI staff members, research Fellows and postgraduate students focused largely on developing the careers of scientists. An interesting exercise for members of the group attending the discussion including the visitors was to attempt to describe their work and interests in less that three minutes; not an easy task!

For Prof. Mike Wingfield, FABI Director, the visit was particularly memorable as Prof. Paul Teng had been one of his Ph.D. Professors at the University of Minnesota many years ago.  The day concluded with a tour to the University of Pretoria Research Precinct where the visitors had an opportunity to see the rapidly growing FUTURE AFRICA Project and to hear more about how it will catalyse interdisciplinary research in Africa from FABI Director designate and Future Africa leader Prof. Bernard Slippers.