Dr Francis Petersen,
Chairperson of the CSIR Board
Dean: Faculty of Engineering & the Built Environment, University of Cape Town
Dr Francis Petersen became Dean of the Faculty of Engineering & the Built Environment at the University of Cape Town in 2008. Before that, he was Head: Strategy at Anglo Platinum Corporation and a former Executive Vice-President: R&D at Mintek. He graduated from the University of Stellenbosch with the BEng (Chem), MEng (Metal) and DEng degrees. He is a recipient of the Ernest Oppenheimer Memorial Trust and the Cape Technikon Researcher of the Year Awards and is a regular reviewer, and member of a range of editorial boards for international journals. Furthermore, he is a member of the National Advisory Council on Innovation (NACI), member of the Board of the National Research Foundation (NRF) and a member of the Engineering Council of South Africa (ECSA). Petersen is a registered professional engineer with ECSA, and a member of the Councils of both the South African Institution of Chemical Engineers (SAIChE) and the South African Institute of Mining and Metallurgy (SAIMM). He chairs the investment committee of the Innovation Fund and is a Fellow of both the SAIMM and the South African Academy of Engineers.

Mr Norbert Behrens
Group General Manager: Strategy and Planning, Sasol Limited
Norbert Behrens has more than 20-years’ experience in the energy and petrochemical industry, which he gained while working for AECI, ICI (UK), Polifin and Sasol, in various technical, techno-commercial, marketing and strategy roles. His career includes positions in engineering (process development and simulation, and construction); sales, marketing and product development; and a number of roles in strategy and planning. Behrens gained broad international experience while working in Europe, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Iran, the USA, Asia and the Middle East. He served on the following boards: Sasol Polymers International Investments, Wesco China Limited, and the Chemical and Allied Industry Association (current). He holds a BSc (Chemical Engineering) from the University of Stellenbosch, a postgraduate diploma in industrial engineering (Wits) and an MBA from Wits Business School. He also attended the Advanced Management Program at the University of Pennsylvania, USA. Behrens shapes and coordinates the strategy of Sasol Group, requiring, among others, a broad understanding of the global energy and petrochemical industries and how these relate to the world economy.

Mr Alan De Villiers Charles Knott-Craig
Director of Companies
Under Alan Knott-Craig’s leadership, Vodacom went from an initial investment of R1,15 billion in October 1993 by three shareholders to a conglomerate with an annual turnover of some R50 billion by 2008 and more than 35 million subscribers in five countries (South Africa, Tanzania, Lesotho, Mozambique and the DRC) by 2008. He obtained his BSc (Electrical Engineering) from the University of Cape Town, an MBL from Unisa and a degree in Doctor of Business Leadership, conferred by Unisa in recognition of his contribution to the field of telecommunications. Knott-Craig is a member of the South African Council for Professional Engineers, South Africa Institute of Electrical Engineers, Computer Society of South Africa, and the Institute of Directors. Recent achievements include an appointment by the President of South Africa on the Presidential National Commission on Information Society & Development for ICTs; an appointment to the Advisory Board of the Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment, University of Cape Town; an award from the CSSA/Computing SA Fellowship Award for his continuous contribution to the ICT industry throughout his career; and receiving the South African Institute of Electrical Engineers (SAIEE) President’s Award for outstanding contribution made.

Mr McLean Sibanda
Senior Patent Attorney and Head of Intellectual Property Management Office, Innovation
Fund of the National Research Foundation
McLean Sibanda holds BSc (Eng) and MSc (Eng) degrees from the University of the Witwatersrand, and the LLB and LLM (Commercial Law) degrees from the University of South Africa (UNISA). He is an admitted and practising attorney of the High Court of South Africa, and is also a qualified and registered South African patent attorney. He has wide legal experience in intellectual property and commercial law, with particular interests in patents, copyright, commercialisation of intellectual property, deal structuring, company law and commercial law. McLean has authored and co-authored a number of scientific and intellectual property articles and has been an invited speaker at various conferences, seminars and workshops on various aspects of intellectual property. He has been involved with reviewing and drafting intellectual property strategies and policies, in addition to developing intellectual property management and technology transfer capacity for the South African public sector. He is a fellow of the South African Institute of Intellectual Property Lawyers (SAIIPL), serves on a number of boards in the capacity of a non-executive director; and is also the Vice-President of the Licensing Executives Society of South Africa.

Mr Mninawe Silinga
Chief Executive, Coega Development Corporation
Mninawe (Pepi) Silinga holds various qualifications, including an MEng from the University of the Witwatersrand; a graduate diploma in corporate governance (Institute of Directors, UK); an MBA from Heriot Watt University (Edinburgh Business School, Scotland); a BSc (Civil Engineering) from the University of Natal; and a graduate diploma in company direction (Graduate Institute of Management and Technology, GIMT). Silinga holds professional qualifications from the Institute of Directors (UK), the Project Management Institute, and the Engineering Council of South Africa. In addition, he is a member of the South African Academy of Engineers, the Institute of Directors – South Africa, and the South African Institute of Civil Engineers. Current board memberships include the Rural Housing Loan Fund, Agrèment South Africa, University of Fort Hare, and AsgiSA (Eastern Cape). Silinga was one of the inaugural trustees of the Independent Development Trust in 2002 and also served on the Presidential Project Team (Eastern Cape) as chief executive.

Ms Khomotso Thoka
Managing Executive of The Talent Hub
Khomotso Thoka is the founder and Managing Executive of The Talent Hub, a talent management and HR consulting business. She obtained a B.Admin from the University of the North, an honours degree in business administration from the Stellenbosch Business School, an MBA from the University of Hull (UK) and she participated in a Senior Executive Program at Harvard Business School, Boston, US. Board memberships include the Afgri Board of Directors and the Council of Johannesburg University. Previously, Thoka was the managing director of the Courier and Freight Group where she provided leadership in positioning the company as a market leader. Her mandate also included returning the company to profitability, which was achieved in less than two years. Speaker roles include an invitation by Portsdam University in Germany to deliver a paper on transformation during its Transformation Conference. At the South African Post Office she was responsible for human resources and business restructuring as well as total business image transformation.

Professor Denis Hall
Deputy Principal and Pro-Vice-Chancellor, Heriot-Watt University
Professor Denis Hall has been Deputy Principal (Research) and Pro-Vice Chancellor at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, UK since 1998. In parallel, he leads the Lasers and Photonics Applications Group as Professor of Photonics in the Department of Physics. Hall has been elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, the UK Institute of Physics, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, the Optical Society of America, and of the Institution of Electrical Engineers. He was furthermore elected Chair of the European Physical Society Quantum Electronics and Optics Division Board (1998-2000) and Chair of the International Council on Quantum Electronics (2004-2006). He serves on numerous government and academic committees, and is the principal investigator of multiple grants and contracts involving academic/industry partnerships and technology transfer with a total value of more than £21 million. He is a non-executive director of a number of companies, and is co-founder of three photonics companies. Hall holds a BSc in physics (Manchester University), an MPhil in biology (London University), a PhD in electrical engineering (Case Western Reserve University, USA) and an MBA (Edinburgh Business School).

Professor Mike Wingfield
Director: Forestry and Agricultural Biotechnology Institute, University of Pretoria
Professor Mike Wingfield is the Mondi Professor of Forest Pathology and founder and Director of the Forestry and Agricultural Biology Technology Institute (FABI) and the Tree Pathology Cooperative Programme (TPCP) at the University of Pretoria (UP). His previous positions include a Chair at the University of the Free State and a senior post in the Department of Agriculture. Wingfield serves local and international companies worldwide as a consultant. He is the recipient of major local and international awards, the most recent of which is the UP Outstanding Achiever Award and the UP Chancellor's Medal for Research. He holds numerous prestigious positions on various national and international scientific and forestry committees, and has wide-ranging editorial responsibilities for local and international publications. He has published extensively in internationally-recognised peer-review journals, and is the author of several books for the American Phytopathological Society Press. He remains active in the field of research, with numerous postgraduate students. Wingfield holds a PhD from the University of Minnesota.

Dr Sibusiso Sibisi
President and CEO: CSIR
Dr Sibusiso Sibisi has been the President and CEO of the CSIR since 2002. He is the chairperson of the Denel Board and a board member of Liberty Life. Sibisi joined the Department of Computational and Applied Mathematics, University of the Witwatersrand in 1984 and was a Fulbright Fellow at the California Institute of Technology in 1988. He holds a BSc (Hons) in physics from Imperial College of Science and Technology in London and a PhD from the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics (DAMTP) at Cambridge University. He returned to Cambridge in 1989 to assume a research position at DAMTP. In 1991, he co-founded a research-based small enterprise at Cambridge. In 1997, he returned to South Africa, joining Plessey South Africa as Executive Director (R&D). He co-founded iThemba Pharmaceuticals (Pty) Ltd in 2001 and served as Chairperson of the National Advisory Council on Innovation (NACI) from 1998 to 2001. In January 2000 he became Deputy Vice-Chancellor for Research and Innovation at the University of Cape Town.