Mathilde is involved with both undergraduate and postgraduate writing development in the quantitative disciplines. She completed her PhD in Genetics in 2010 at the University of Stellenbosch, where she also acted as writing consultant at their language centre's writing lab. She is interested in the public communication of science and won the first prize in the 2010 SAASTA (South African Agency for Science and Technology Advancement) young science communicators' competition. The prize enabled her to attend the 2011 AAAS (American Association for the Advancement of Science) conference in Washington DC. With a background in the natural sciences and an interest in writing, her research focus is on quantitative literacy in both academic scientific texts and popular scientific texts.

She works closely with the Writing and Numeracy centres and collaborates with quantitative disciplines to design writing interventions for undergraduate and postgraduate students. Recently, she has developed and convened the successful ‘Write Science' (2013 and 2014), a short course for postgraduates focused on research dissemination beyond the thesis.