University of Cape Town

Professor Claeys’ research focuses on catalysis for energy applications, including the Fischer-Tropsch process. This technology lies at the heart of South Africa’s synthetic fuels and chemicals industry, and plays an increasingly important role worldwide in the production of future green fuels and chemicals from sustainable sources.

Professor Anusuya Chinsamy-Turan is a palaeobiologist in the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of Cape Town. She is a global expert on the microscopic structure of the bones of extinct and extant vertebrates.

Her work has been recognised by several highly acclaimed awards, including an NRF President Award in 1995, and the South African Woman of the Year Award in 2005.

Prof Renée Christine Kraan-Korteweg is an expert in the area of large-scale distribution of galaxies, the Zone of Avoidance, systematic HI surveys, cosmic flow fields, and galaxy evolution, and internationally recognised for her work in unveiling the galaxy distribution hidden by the Milky Way. Currently a Senior Research Scholar and Emeritus Professor at UCT, she has played a leading role in the establishment and promotion of astronomy, first at the University of Guanajuato, Mexico and then at UCT.

Professor Gary Maartens is both head of clinical pharmacology at the University of Cape Town and a chief specialist physician at Groote Schuur Hospital.

As a young specialist doctor, he worked in Cape Town during the early ’90s, witnessing first-hand the HIV epidemic in South Africa and realised much research needed to be done. Today Maartens is an international authority on the therapeutic aspects of HIV-associated TB, drug-resistant TB and antiretroviral therapy in resource-limited settings. 

Professor Farrant is the world’s leading expert on resurrection plants, "which come back to life" from a desiccated, seemingly dead state when they are rehydrated. She investigates the ability of many species of these plants to survive without water for long periods of time – looking at the molecular, biochemical and ultrastructural to the whole-plant ecophysiological. She uses a unique comparative approach and works with many different species of resurrection plants and a variety of tissues.

Professor Janelidze obtained his DSc from the St Petersburg State University in 1992 where he was the first DSc in category theory in the former USSR. Later, he was a visiting professor at a number of institutions in Europe, North America, and Australia. He was appointed as professor at UCT in 2004, and became an honorary member of the A Razmadze Mathematical Institute of the Georgian Academy of Science.

Co-director of the national Centre for Artificial Intelligence Research (CAIR), Professor Tommie Meyer is also the leader of the Knowledge Representation and Reasoning group at UCT and the director of the Artificial Intelligence Research Unit (AIRU) – CAIR UCT node. Prior to this he held positions at the CSIR in Pretoria, National ICT Australia (now Data61), the University of New South Wales in Australia, the University of Pretoria and the University of South Africa.

Professor Mesthrie is the research chair in the School of African & Gender Studies, Anthropology & Linguistics (AXL). He is a past president of the Linguistics Society of Southern Africa (2001-2009) and a past head of the Linguistics Section at UCT (1998-2009). He was elected honorary life executive member of the Linguistics Society of Southern Africa in 2012. He is currently an executive member of the International Society for English Linguistics and an elected member of the SA Academy of Science.

Professor Ekama has 35 years of research experience into activated sludge systems at UCT. Over the years he has been at the forefront of developments in BNR-activated sludge systems modelling, filamentous bulking, and secondary settling tank design and modelling.

Professor Dheda, head of the Division of Pulmonology at UCT, focuses on the design and evaluation of user-friendly diagnostic tools and interventions for drug-sensitive and -resistant tuberculosis (TB).

Dheda led a multicentric study in four countries involving more than 2 500 patients to evaluate a new user-friendly urine-based diagnostic test (urine LAM). This was the first controlled study to evaluate the benefit of the LAM test in reducing mortality and the findings underpinned the WHO guidelines regarding its global rollout.