University of Cape Town

Professor Peter Ryan is director of the FitzPatrick Institute of African Ornithology, which forms the core of a DST-NRF Centre of Excellence using birds as keys to biodiversity conservation. He completed his MSc and PhD in zoology at UCT. After a short stint teaching at the University of California Davis he returned to UCT in 1993 to coordinate the very successful MSc course in conservation biology.

Professor Mizrahi is the director of both the Institute of Infectious Disease and Molecular Medicine (IDM) and the Molecular Mycobacteriology Research Unit of the South African Medical Research Council, and also head of the UCT node of the DST-NRF Centre of Excellence for Biomedical TB Research. Mizrahi’s research team is internationally recognised for its work on aspects of the physiology and metabolism in Mycobacterium tuberculosis of relevance to TB drug discovery and drug resistance.

Emeritus Professor Nurick has been working in the field of impact dynamics for over 20 years. During this period he has supervised over 35 MSc and PhD graduates. He has over 100 academic publications covering the following topics: impact and blast dynamics; crashworthiness; material properties at high strain rates; metals and composites; human response and survivability; impact on sports equipment; and comminution.

Professor Rybicki is director of the Biopharming Research Unit (BRU) in the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology. After completing a PhD in virology, he rose through the ranks to become a professor in microbiology in 2003. He is a founder member of the Institute of Infectious Disease and Molecular Medicine (IDM). In 2015, he received the first deputy vice-chancellor’s Award for Achievement in Innovation. His areas of expertise are vaccines, plant expression systems, plant biotechnology and virus diversity.

Distinguished Professor Salazar is a graduate in philosophy, politics and literature from École normale supérieure and the Sorbonne (Paris). He is a distinguished professor of rhetoric at UCT and director of the Centre for Rhetoric Studies. He is a former director in rhetoric and democracy at Jacques Derrida's foundation, Collège International de Philosophie, Paris.

Professor of economics, Don Ross, was the first dean of a South African commerce faculty to be awarded an A-rating by the National Research Foundation. He was dean of UCT's Faculty of Commerce from 2010 to 2015. Ross's research unites economic methodology, experimental economics and econometrics, cognitive science and the philosophy of science. He is also programme director for methodology at the Centre for Economic Analysis of Risk (CEAR) at Georgia State University in Atlanta.

Emeritus Professor Dirk van Zyl Smit was a Professor of Criminology at UCT from 1982 to 2005. In recent years, he has also been a visiting professor at Humboldt University in Berlin and the Catholic University of Leuven, and a Senior Fulbright Research Fellow and later a visiting Global Professor at New York University School of Law. In 2008, he was awarded an honorary doctorate in law from the University of Greifswald, Germany.

A researcher in the field of Ecology and Environmental Science, Professor Claire Spottiswoode’s work focuses on the ecology, evolution and conservation of species interactions. Her team’s research aims to understand how the process of coevolution, both antagonistic and mutualistic, contributes to the adaptation and diversification of biodiversity. Prof Spottiswoode obtained her BSc and Honours degrees in Zoology and Botany from the University of Cape Town.

Professor Solms is best known for his landmark discovery of the brain mechanisms of dreaming, and for his interest in the integration of modern neuroscience with psychoanalytic theories and methods. He is currently professor in neuropsychology at UCT, a lecturer in neurosurgery at St Bartholomew’s and the Royal London School of Medicine, and director of the Neuropsychoanalysis Center of the New York Psychoanalytic Institute.

Professor Tuccini specialises in the field of mysticism and religion in Italian literature (poetry and prose), medieval/early-modern Italian authors, as well as in Italian prose, cinema and drama of the 20th century, in particular on Pier Paolo Pasolini and Enrico Pea, of whom Tuccini is an undisputed authority.