Chief Executive Officer, National Research Foundation of South Africa
Prof Nelwamondo is an experienced executive with a proven track record in strategy, operational planning and successful implementation. He has worked within the National System of Innovation with multiple stakeholders in the public and private sectors and led complex organizational outfits in the forefront of research, development and innovation, in areas such as Artificial Intelligence, Communication Technologies and Data Science, that underpins the Fourth Industrial Revolution. He has a proven track record in spearheading innovation-driven research portfolios that demonstrated huge financial returns and societal impact.
Prof Nelwamondo serves in various leadership roles, nationally and internationally including Chairman and Panel Member of several NRF committees such as the Flagship Programme; the Centres of Excellence (CoE) programme; and the South African Research Chairs Initiative (SARChI).
He holds a PhD in Electrical Engineering in Computational Intelligence from the University of the Witwatersrand. In 2008, he advanced his research endeavours as a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University and was the youngest South African to receive the Harvard-South Africa Fellowship.
