Speakers

SASBMB Gold Medalist

Keynote Speakers:

Lynn Morris is the Interim Executive Director of the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) and Principal Medical Scientist in the HIV Virology Section, Centre for HIV & STI’s at the NICD. She holds a joint appointment as Research Professor at the University of the Witwatersrand and is an Honorary Senior Scientist at CAPRISA. She completed her undergraduate studies at Wits University and obtained a DPhil from the University of Oxford in 1988. Lynn is an NRF A-rated researcher. She has contributed significantly to understanding the development of antibody response to HIV and conducts validated end-point assays for HIV vaccine clinical trials. Lynn has supervised 30 PhD and MSc students. She has published over 260 papers resulting in a Scopus H-index of 63. She is listed by the Web of Science as among the highest cited researchers worldwide.

Plenary Speakers:

Kelly Chibale (UCT)

(PhD, Synthetic Organic Chemistry, University of Cambridge, UK, 1992) is a full Professor of Organic Chemistry at the University of Cape Town (UCT).  He is Neville Isdell Chair in African-centric Drug Discovery and Development; Full Member of the UCT Institute of Infectious Disease & Molecular Medicine and a Tier 1 South Africa Research Chair in Drug Discovery.  Also Founding Director of South African Medical Research Council (SAMRC) Drug Discovery & Development Research Unit at UCT and Founder / Director of UCT Drug Discovery & Development Centre (H3D). Fortune magazine listed him in top 50 Greatest Leaders for 2018.

Lyn-Marie Birkholtz (UP)
 

Brett Pletschke (RU)

Prof Brett I. Pletschke (Ph.D-1996., FAAS, MRSSAf) is currently a Professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Microbiology at Rhodes University. His research interest lies in the fields of enzymology and enzyme biotechnology - more specifically, in the use of enzymes and their synergistic relationships to generate bioproducts. He has published more than 85 papers/book chapters with several patents, the most recent an enzyme formulation to improve animal feed. He is a fellow of the African Academy of Sciences (AAS) and serves on the editorial boards of “Enzyme and Microbial Technology” and “Biotechnology Letters”. Prof Pletschke is also a past President of SASBMB.