The recent 42nd Annual Congress of the South African Association of Botanists (SAAB), hosted in January at the University of the Free State, Bloemfontein, saw the gathering of plant scientists of national and international repute. The theme of the conference was "Biodiversity: Past, present, future" and presented botanists with the opportunity to come together and share ideas on current research developments in plant sciences. At the meeting Dr Paul Hills was elected as the new vice-president of the SAAB. According to the SAAB's constitution, this means that he is the SAAB President-Elect and will serve as president in 2017 and 2018.
Dr Hills is based at the Institute for Plant Biotechnology, Stellenbosch University. He is a plant molecular physiologist, working mainly on plants and their response to environmental cues and how these regulate their growth and development on a molecular level. Dr Hills has been serving as treasurer on the SAAB Council for the past five years. His term as president will commence from the next SAAB Congress, which will be hosted jointly by the University of the Western Cape and the Cape Peninsula University of Technology in January next year. We would like to congratulate Dr Hills on his new appointment and wish him all the best with this new commitment.
