As the city of Makhanda navigates the complexities of a protracted water crisis, which includes ageing municipal infrastructure, four dedicated members of the Rhodes University community begin their labour before the first light of dawn. Their mission is fundamental: to ensure that the "lifeblood" of the institution – its water – continues to flow during frequent municipal outages.

The 2025 SARAO Postgraduate and Postdoctoral Scholarship Conference (24–27 November), a vital gathering for South Africa’s rapidly advancing radio astronomy community, marked its 20th anniversary this year.?Yet to understand the momentum behind the Rhodes University researchers presenting their work, one has to look back to a moment when the field itself nearly vanished from the South African landscape.

Visitors often arrive in Makhanda expecting quiet streets, heritage buildings and the measured rhythm of a small town. What they discover instead is something far more instructive: a place that lays bare the daily consequences of policy decisions, governance gaps and economic strain. It was this setting that Mr Ryan Hancocks, Director of the South African Reserve Bank Centre for Economics Journalism (SARB CEJ) at Rhodes University, believed would transform a routine training workshop into something deeper

Scientific progress rarely moves in a straight line. When global attention shifts, entire research fields can lose momentum, leaving gaps that become apparent only decades later. Diseases once thought manageable resurface with new force. Novel pathogens emerge. Health systems struggle to keep pace with technological and social change. These pressures make sustained, contextually grounded research essential, particularly in countries carrying a high burden of infectious and chronic disease. It is within this landscape that Rhodes University’s Faculty of Pharmacy convened its 2025 Research Symposium, a two-day examination of how discovery, innovation and community impact intersect.