For the third year running, PhD student Quentin Guignard walked away with the Best Dressed Male award at the 2018 annual meeting of the Society for the Presentation of Outrageous Findings (SPOOF). Quentin was dressed as maiden in the tower, Rapunzel, complete with lustrous golden locks to go with this year’s Medieval theme. PhD candidate Josephine Queffelec took the Best Dressed Female crown for the second year running, this year as the menacing Tower of Sauron, in homage to The Lord of the Rings. 

Members of the FABI Social Club transformed TuksMonate into a kingdom far, far away where a brave maiden in search of that PhD degree, rescues a knight from a furry and scary beast! A SPOOF meeting would however not be complete without a celebration of “profoundly” outrageous science and different groups at FABI delivered on this and guffaws galore. The audience voted the Phytobacteriology group and Stephanie van Wyk Jesters of the Evening in the Best Oral Presentation and Best Multimedia Presentation categories, respectively. 

The Phytobacteriology took the prize for their introduction to ground-breaking app, Tender. Adored by supervisors and students alike, the app is useful for finding students with acceptable coffee addiction levels and those who won’t disturb their supervisors while they nap in their office. Stephanie galloped with the multimedia prize for her second instalment of the “Gene Jockey’s Guide to Surviving the PhD” with invaluable tips for finding a supervisor who scores high on the “empathy quotient” and avoiding unsightly “PhD spread”.