Keynote Speakers
Prof. Edith M Antunes
University of the Western Cape, South Africa
Prof. Edith M. Antunes (Beukes) is an Associate Professor in the Department of Chemistry at the University of the Western Cape, South Africa. With a PhD in Chemistry from Rhodes University, Prof. Antunes focused on natural products chemistry, green nanomaterials synthesis, and advanced NMR spectroscopy. Her research bridges marine and terrestrial natural product discovery, bioactive compound isolation, solid-state and solution NMR, and the sustainable synthesis and characterization of functional nanomaterials. She has made contributions to developing eco-friendly techniques for synthesizing nanomaterials and exploring their applications as catalysts and bioactive agents, closely aligning with global sustainability goals.
Prof. Antunes’ achievements include over 100 peer-reviewed publications, several book chapters, and invitations to speak at national and international conferences. She is committed to capacity building through the supervision of numerous MSc and PhD students and serves as a member of organizations such as the American Society of Pharmacognosy and the South African Chemical Institute.
Prof. Winston Nxumalo
University of Limpopo, South Africa
Prof Winston Nxumalo obtained his PhD from the University of the Witwatersrand in 2011. He did his post-doc at GSK (Spain) and iThemba Pharmaceuticals from March 2011 until April 2012, working on developing new drugs to treat TB. He joined the University of Limpopo as a senior lecturer in May 2012, and became Professor of Chemistry in 2021. Prof Nxumalo’s research interests are in medicinal chemistry, focusing on synthesis of heterocyclic compounds and isolation of bioactive compounds from medicinal plants which are tested for activity against various diseases such as TB, malaria and cancer. His research also focusses on Continuous Flow Technology in the synthesis of active pharmaceutical ingredients (API). Winston is a leader of the UL-MEDCHEM research group and a full member of the Grand Challenge African Drug Discovery Accelerator (GC ADDA) network.
Prof. Tricia Naicker
University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa
Professor Tricia Naicker received her M.Sc. (cum laude) in Chemistry in 2008 and Ph.D. in Pharmaceutical Chemistry in 2011 from the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN). She subsequently undertook an Oppenheimer-funded postdoctoral fellowship in asymmetric catalysis under the mentorship of Professor KA Jørgensen, a globally recognized leader in the field, at Aarhus University, Denmark. Since 2013, she has led independent research at the Catalysis and Peptide Research Unit (CPRU) at UKZN.
A highly published scientist with peer-reviewed articles, book chapters, and a patent, her research is centred on the organic synthesis of biologically relevant intermediates, with a focus on antibacterial agents. Her work is embedded within a multidisciplinary team at the CPRU, fostering collaborations across synthetic chemistry, microbiology, analytical chemistry, and computational modelling. She has successfully mentored numerous postgraduate students and remains deeply engaged in science outreach and capacity development.
Professor Naicker has been inaugurated into national (SAYAS, OWSD) and international (AAS) scientific academies and has served on the executive committees of these prestigious bodies. Her scientific excellence has been recognised through several awards, including the Taylor & Francis–John C. Warner Prize, the DST Women in Science Award, and the SACI Raikes Medal. She currently serves as Deputy Editor-in-Chief of the South African Journal of Chemistry.
Prof. Paul Watts
Nelson Mandela University, South Africa
Prof Vinesh Maharaj
University of Pretoria, South Africa
Prof Vinesh Maharaj is the director of the Biodiscovery Centre and the Deputy Dean of Research and Post Graduate Education, Faculty of Natural and Agricultural Sciences, University of Pretoria. Prof Maharaj is a natural product chemist and is trained in the discovery and development of new drug leads based on biodiversity samples. His is currently creating a unique repository of natural products comprising 10 000 plant samples which forms the basis for the natural product library, the first of its kind in Africa. The samples are converted into high throughput screening formats of several thousand semi pure compounds and subsets have been biologically tested against various diseases such as HIV, malaria, cancer, antimicrobials, Epstein Barr virus, neurological and metabolic diseases and COVID-19. He obtained funding from the Department of Science and Innovation (DSI) to establish this platform to makes these resources available to the national system of innovation. The infrastructure includes high-end hyphenated analytical equipment for the chemical characterisation of the library. More recently AI and machine learning approaches towards drug discovery using the library are being investigated
Prof Jan Rijn Zeevaart
South African Nuclear Energy Corporation, South Africa
Dr Zeevaart received his PhD from the Techniese Universiteit Delft in the Netherlands in 2001. In 2002, he was appointed as head of the Radiochemistry group at Necsa. He is a NRF rated researcher since 2009 with a current rating of B2. He is the co-author of ~100 international publications, >150 conference contributions and credited with 6 patents. He is frequently invited as a keynote and plenary speaker at international conferences.
Dr Zeevaart leads the Radiochemistry department at Necsa and during his tenure, he developed the isotope production processes that now reside with NTP Radioisotopes SOC. Most notably, he developed the fission I-131production for the Necsa group. These commercialisation efforts earn South Africa considerable foreign revenue. His research disciplines are radiochemicals & radiopharmaceutical chemistry and he has a keen interest in exploiting these disciplines in designing new radiopharmaceuticals. He also functions as the NTeMBI (Nuclear Technologies in Medicine and Biosciences Initiative) coordinator and was the NuMeRI (Nuclear Medicine Research Infrastructure) champion from 2016-2020, establishing the 3 nodes while the full research infrastructure at Steve Biko Academic Hospital was designed. Both are national initiatives of the South African Department of Science and Innovation and intend to design new radiopharmaceuticals and make radiolabelled versions of potential pharmaceuticals available for imaging of these drug entities. Several infection imaging radiopharmaceuticals now form part of the suite of radiotracers available clinically as developed together with Prof Mike Sathekge from the Steve Biko Academic Hospital / University of Pretoria, Nuclear Medicine dept.
Dr Zeevaart was the recipient of the 2007 South African Chemical Institute’s Raikes Medal and part of the international team awarded the Marie Curie award by the European Association of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging in 2018. In March 2019, he received the Top Intellectual Creator Award from the Department of Science and Technology. In 2024, he was admitted to the Academy of Science of South Africa (ASSAf).
Dr Martin Friede
Former Head of the Vaccine Research Unit, WHO, Geneva
After nearly 23 years of employment at the Word Health Organization (WHO, Geneva) Dr Martin Friede has recently retired as the Head of the Vaccine Research Unit. During his time at the WHO he provided leadership to WHO’s activities on vaccine research including product development, development of vaccine research policies, strategies and priorities, and assistance to countries to establish vaccine R&D and production. In addition, Martin led the WHO’s activities on technology transfer for vaccines, and expanding local vaccine production capacity: Dr Friede led the team building pandemic influenza vaccine capacity in low- and middle-income countries, have established vaccine adjuvant technology transfer facilities.
Martin work has led to the establishment of the mRNA technology transfer hub in South Africa aimed to address vaccine inequity. Since retiring, he has been contracted as a Senior Advisor to the Medicines Patent Pool also in Geneva, Switzerland. Dr Friede’s links to Africa are through his high school education in Swaziland (now eSwatini) as well as obtaining a PhD in biochemistry at the University of Cape Town.
