University of Cape Town

As director of UCT’s Drug Discovery and Development Centre (H3D), the main thrust of Professor Chibale’s research can be described as drug discovery for communicable parasitic and bacterial diseases, such as malaria and tuberculosis.

Emeritus Professor Butterworth heads the Marine Resource Assessment and Management (MARAM) Research Group. He has acted as a consultant on fisheries management issues to 11 other national governments, and also to fishing industries in 10 countries. He has served as a national representative or invitee in his personal capacity on the scientific committees of 11 international fisheries organisations.

Professor Barashenkov received his MSc from the Moscow State University and a PhD in mathematical and theoretical physics from the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna. His research interests include nonlinear dynamics and theory of nonlinear waves, in particular solitary waves, localised patterns and vortices. Barashenkov's early research projects focussed on the so-called dark solitons.

Professor Vasco Brattka is a leading researcher in computable analysis, collaborating on the development and establishment of the research field of Weihrauch complexity. Prof Brattka obtained a PhD in Computer Science from Hagen University, Germany. He joined the University of Cape Town as Head of Department in 2004 and later appointed Associate Professor in 2009. He is also an Honorary Research Associate at UCT and Professor of Theoretical Computer Science and Mathematical Logic at the Universität der Bundeswehr München, Germany. 

Professor Chidester is a prolific writer and an internationally acclaimed scholar in the field of comparative religion. His interests lie in the relationships between religion and globalisation, religion and popular culture, religion in society and the problems of social cohesion.

Professor Linda-Gail Bekker is a physician-scientist with a keen interest in HIV, tuberculosis (TB) and related diseases. Her research interests include programmatic and health service research around antiretroviral roll-out and TB integration and the prevention of HIV in women. She is passionate about community development and engagement and is both deputy director of the Desmond Tutu HIV Centre and chief operating officer of the Desmond Tutu HIV Foundation.

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.