Roxine Staats, a postgraduate student in biochemistry ​at Stellenbosch University, has been awarded a Skye Foundation Scholarship to pursue her MSc degree at Cambridge University in the United Kingdom.

The Skye Foundation was established in 1997 by the Zylstra Family Trust to fund postgraduate scholarships in South Africa and abroad. The scholarships are awarded on the basis of outstanding academic achievement in any discipline and are tenable worldwide.

Roxine says she has always wanted to study overseas: "This is really a dream come true. It took a lot of effort to do the application and there are thousands of things to get into place before I can leave, but it is absolutely worth the while."

"She will conduct her research in the laboratory of Prof. Michele Vendruscolo in the Centre for Misfolding Diseases at Cambridge. "Many neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease, develop when proteins in the brain start to break down (called misfolding). As the proteins degenerate, it leads to the build-up of toxic protein clumps or aggregates."

"Most of my work in biochemistry so far has been on proteins and enzymes. When linked to research on neurodegenerative diseases, the idea is to understand why and how the protein breaks down and then to develop therapeutic interventions to prevent or delay the process," she explains.

In 2014, Roxine received the Merck Award for the best final-year student in biotechnology in the Department of Chemistry and Polymer Science and in 2015 the award for the best honours student in the Department of Biochemistry

This former learner of Hudson Park High School in East-London will be starting her new academic career at Cambridge University in October this year.