Rate My Professor Thato Manamela

Dr Thato Manamela is a SARAO-funded postdoctoral researcher in the Physics Department at the University of Pretoria. He holds a BSc from the University of Limpopo, a BSc Honours in Astrophysics from the University of Cape Town through the National Astrophysics and Space Science Programme, and completed his MSc and PhD in Physics at the University of Pretoria, with the PhD awarded following research completed in 2021. His work centres on galaxy evolution in the distant Universe, with a particular focus on hydroxyl megamasers as tracers of extreme star formation and galaxy mergers. He led the discovery of the farthest-known cosmic OH megamaser, detected more than eight billion light-years away using the MeerKAT radio telescope, with findings published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society Letters.

Dr Manamela collaborates across UP faculties on projects involving signal processing, data science and instrumentation, supporting research that bridges astrophysics, engineering and computing. His contributions include first-author publications on megamaser detection and visibility stacking with MeerKAT data, advancing understanding of galaxy growth and the large-scale structure of the Universe. He participates in major telescope collaborations including MeerKAT, JWST and the Event Horizon Telescope. No professional email address is publicly listed on official university profiles.