“Research & Innovation in the Post-CoVID Period”

6th RISG RESEARCH & INNOVATION BIENNIAL DIALOGUE |11 JUNE 2021

For further information visit: https://www.usaf.ac.za/usaf-events/

“Research & Innovation in the Post-CoVID Period”

Organised by the Research and Innovation Strategy GroupUSAf National Directorate

Theme:

OPENING AND WELCOME

9:00 - 9:10 Welcome and opening remarks Prof Thoko MayekisoVice-ChancellorUniversity of Mpumalanga &Chairperson of the RISG

9:10 - 9:30 Opening Address: Dr Phil MjwaraExploring the STI Decadal Plan. Director-General

Department of Science, Technology & Innovation

10:30 – 10:45 BREAK

9:30 -10:00 COVID 19: Its trajectory and future Professor Salim Abdool Karimimpact on research and innovation. CAPRISA & University of

KwaZulu-Natal

10:00 – 10:30 COVID 19: Global Lessons for Professor Crain SoudienResearch and Innovation. University of Cape Town

10:45 – 11:00 COVID 19: Lessons for the National Professor Rasigan Maharajh System of Innovation (NSI). Director (IERI)

Tshwane University of Technology

11:00 – 11:15 COVID-19: The Future of Professor Anastassios PourisResearch Funding. University of Pretoria

11:15 – 11:30 COVID-19: Postgraduate funding. Professor Fulufhelo Nelwamondo Chief Executive O�cerNational Research Foundation

11:30 – 11:45 COVID-19: International Partnerships. Professor Ylva Rodny-GumedeExecutive DirectorUniversity of Johannesburg

11:45 – 12:30 Q & A – Plenary discussions Session Chair

SESSION 1: COVID 19 - IMPACT ON RESEARCH AND POSTGRADUATE STUDIESSession Chairperson: Prof Ahmed Bawa, CEO, Universities South Africa

Programme

Programme

13:30 – 14:00 Research ethics at a time Professor Jerome Singhof pandemic. World Health Organisation

14:00 – 14:20 Research ethics, integrity training Professor Stephanie Burton and communication during University of Pretoriapandemic times.

14:20 – 14:40 The NIHSS Experience: Research Professor Sarah MosoetsaIntegrity in the Social Sciences Chief Executive O�cerand Humanities. National Institute for the Humanities

& Social Sciences

14:40 – 15:00 Steps to address the strengthening Mr Mahlubi Mabizelaof South Africa’s research Chief Directorpublication integrity. Department of Higher

Education & Training

15:00 - 15:30 Discussion Session Chair

15:30 – 16:00 Closing remarks Professor Thoko MayekisoProfessor Ahmed Bawa

SESSION 2: ETHICAL RESEARCH AND INTEGRITYSession Chairperson: Prof Chris Nhlapo, Vice-Chancellor, Cape Peninsular University of Technology

Dr Philemon Mjwara holds a BSc, MSc and PhD from the University of the Witwatersrand.

His academic career includes serving as professor of Science and Technology Policy at the University of Pretoria, and Physics lectureships at the universities of the Witwatersrand, South Africa and Fort Hare. Dr Mjwara has published and presented numerous papers on physics, technology analysis and technology foresight processes.

His professional experience includes working as a director in the former Department of Arts, Culture, Science and Technology, serving on the National Advisory Council On Innovation (NACI) and Group Executive for Research and Development and Strategic Human Capital Development at the Council for Scienti�c and Industrial Research (CSIR).

As part of his many contributions, Dr Mjwara led a team that conducted the South African Technology Foresight project. The outputs of the project were presented to President Thabo Mbeki in 2000. His project approach led to a number of institutions from other parts of the world inviting the core team members to share their knowledge at conferences in Japan, Austria and Hungary.

He was also asked to participate in the development of scenarios for South Africa for the years 2004 to 2014. This was run from the o�ce of the President. Dr Mjwara currently serves as the Director General of the Department of Science and Innovation (DSI), a position he has held since April 2006. His responsibilities include the development and implementation of South Africa’s science, technology and innovation policy. He also serves on various advisory councils and review boards, including the Board of the World of Platinum of South Africa and the Square Kilometre Array Organisation.

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Professor Thoko Mayekiso is the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Mpumalanga with e�ect from 1 November 2014.

She obtained a BA, BA Honours, and MA in Psychology, from the University of Fort Hare. She furthered her studies at the Free University Berlin, in Germany, where she obtained her D. Phil (cum laude) in Psychology. She also holds a Higher Education Diploma (Post Graduate) from the University of South Africa. She is a registered Clinical Psychologist with the Health Professions Council of South Africa.

In her sterling academic career, Prof Mayekiso has held positions of Senior Lecturer, Associate Professor, Professor, Head of Department, and Vice Dean at the then University of Transkei. She practiced as Honorary Clinical Fellow at the Greenwood Institute of Child Health, University of Leicester and simultaneously served as a Clinical Psychologist in the Department of Medical Psychology, Leicester General Hospital in the United Kingdom. The South African University Vice-Chancellors Association and the American Council on Education awarded her a fellowship which was tenable at the University of Washington, Seattle.

She then joined the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in 2001 where she served as Head of School, Deputy Dean, and then Acting Executive Dean in the Faculty of Humanities. She proceeded to the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University in 2007, as an Executive Dean in the Faculty of Arts, and then Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research and Engagement) in 2009. She is a C3 rated scientist by the National Research Foundation.

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Professor Salim S. Abdool Karim, FRS, is a South African clinical infectious diseases epidemiologist widely recognized for scienti�c contributions to HIV prevention and treatment. He is Director of the Centre for the AIDS Programme of Research in South Africa (CAPRISA), Durban, and CAPRISA Professor of Global Health at Columbia University, New York.

He is an Adjunct Professor of Immunology and Infectious Diseases at Harvard University, Boston, Adjunct Professor of Medicine at Cornell University, New York, and Pro Vice-Chancellor (Research) at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban. He is an Associate Member of The Ragon Institute of Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Harvard University. He previously served as President of the South African Medical Research Council and the Co-Chair of the South African Ministerial Advisory Committee on COVID-19. He is currently serving as a Member of the Africa Task Force for Coronavirus and the Lancet Commission on COVID-19.

Professor Abdool Karim is ranked among the world’s most highly cited scientists by Web of Science. He serves on the Boards of several journals, including the New England Journal of Medicine, Lancet Global Health, Lancet HIV and mBio. He is the Chair of the UNAIDS Scienti�c Expert Panel, WHO’s HIV Strategic and Technical Advisory Committee as well as the WHO TB-HIV Task Force. He is a member of the Scienti�c Advisory Board for Global Health at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

His many awards include the African Union’s “Kwame Nkrumah Award” which is Africa’s most prestigious scienti�c award, the Kuwait Al-Sumait Award, the Canadian Gairdner Global Health Award and pinnacle awards from the African Academy of Sciences, Academy of Science in South Africa, Royal Society of South Africa and the South African Medical Research Council. He is member of the US National Academy of Medicine, the American Academy of Microbiology and the Association of American Physicians. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS).

Professor Crain Soudien was educated in the �elds of education and African Studies at the Universities of Cape Town, South Africa and the State University of New York at Bu�alo. His PhD dissertation from Bu�alo was on South African youth identity. He is a former deputy vice-chancellor of the University of Cape Town, where he remains an emeritus professor in Education and African Studies and the former Chief Executive O�cer of the Human Sciences Research Council.

He has an honorary appointment at the Nelson Mandela University. His publications in the areas of social di�erence, culture, education policy, comparative education, educational change, public history and popular culture include four books, four edited collections and over 220 articles, reviews, reports, and Book chapters, including a 2017 publication entitled Nelson Mandela: Comparative Perspectives of his Signi�cance for

Education. He has an A-rating in the South African research system. He is involved in a number of local, national and international social and cultural organisations and is chairperson of the Independent Examinations Board, former chairperson of the District Six Museum Foundation, a former president of the World Council of Comparative Education Societies, and has served as the chair of three Ministerial Committees of Enquiry, including the Ministerial Committee on Transformation in Higher Education and the Ministerial Committee to Evaluate Textbooks for Discrimination. He is a fellow of a number of local and international academies and serves on the boards of a number of cultural, heritage, education and civil society structures.

Professor Rasigan Maharajh is concurrently Professor Extraordinary of the Centre for Research on Evaluation, Science and Technology at Stellenbosch University; a Node Head of the Department of Science and Innovation and National Research Foundation’ Centre of Excellence in Scientometrics and Science, Technology and Innovation Policy; the founding Chief Director of the Institute for Economic Research on Innovation at Tshwane University of Technology; and an Associate Research Fellow of the Tellus Institute in Boston.

Rasigan was previously: Visiting Professor at Rede de Pesquisa em Sistemas e Arranjos Produtivos e Inovativos Locais in the Instituto de Economia of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Visiting Research Scholar at the George Perkins Marsh Institute of Clark University, USA; Head of Policy at the Council for Scienti�c and Industrial Research; and National Coordinator of the Science and Technology Policy Transition Project for South Africa’s �rst democratic government. Before these deployments, Rasigan was: Senior Researcher at the Education Policy Unit of the University of Natal; National Coordinator and Researcher at Operation Upgrade of Southern Africa; Research Assistant at the Macro-Education Policy Unit of the University of Durban-Westville; Research Assistant at the Labour and Community Project of the South African Council for Higher Education; and a Casual Labourer at Pick and Pay Supermarkets.

Professor Anastassios Pouris obtained his Masters degrees in Engineering from the Aristotelian University of Thessaloniki, Greece and Applied Economics from the University of Surrey, England. He received his PhD from the University of Cape Town (South Africa) in policy related issues. He received his executive education at the JF Kennedy School of Government of Harvard University, USA and at the International Institute of Management Development (IMD), Switzerland.

Prof Pouris worked as a Senior Scienti�c O�cer at the Energy Research Institute at the University of Cape Town, as Director of the Science and Technology Directorate of the Foundation for Research Development (FRD, now NRF), as Chief Executive O�cer (CEO) of the Foundation for Education, Science and Technology (FEST), and as Director of the Institute for Technological Innovation at the University of Pretoria. He is currently part of the EBIT Faculty

as he is the Managing Director of Quantitative Evidence Research Consultancy cc.

During his career, Anastassios introduced a number of novel approaches to South Africa’s policy system. He introduced the concept of scientometrics (quantitative assessment and analysis of science policy through indicators) in the country in the late 1980s, and produced, for �rst time in the country, the “Science and Technology Indicators” (a document monitoring comprehensively the science and technology system).

Examples of his past research include investigations on South African science and technology, and international benchmarking of the Science Councils.

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Professor Ylva Rodny-Gumede is the Head of the Division for Internationalisation and a Professor in the School of Communication at the University of Johannesburg. She is also a Senior Associate Researcher with the Stanhope Centre for International Communications Policy Research at the London School of Economics. She holds a PhD from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), London University as well as an MA degree in Politics from the University of Witwatersrand in South Africa and an MA in Journalism from Cardi� University in the U.K.

Professor Rodny-Gumede has worked in journalism, marketing and PR and has consulted for several government, private and academic institutions in Europe and Southern Africa including the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the United Nations Educational, Scienti�c and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) and the Swedish National Agency for Higher Education. She has also

worked as a researcher and project o�cer for the U.S. National Democratic Institute (NDI) and the SADC Parliamentary Forum. She is a member of the University of Johannesburg Senate and has served on several Senate as well as faculty Committees. She holds a C 3 rating from the South African National Research Foundation (NRF) and is the current President of the Southern African Communications and Media Association (SACOMM).

Professor Fulufhelo Nelwamondo is the CEO of the National Research Foundation of South Africa. He holds a PhD in Electrical Engineering, with specialisation in Computational Intelligence from the University of the Witwatersrand. He was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University, and was the youngest South African to receive the prestigious Harvard-South Africa Fellowship. Fulufhelo is a registered Professional Engineer, a Senior Member of the Institute of Electronic and Electrical Engineers (IEEE), a senior member of the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM), amongst others.

Prior to his current role, he held executive positions at the Council for Scienti�c and Industrial Research, and has served in several Boards, Councils, Ministerial Task Teams and Advisory committees. Fulufhelo is passionate about the Fourth Industrial Revolution, particularly in the potential impact its research and technologies can bring in the advancement of humankind, thereby addressing the social ills of poverty, unemployment and inequality. He has been a recipient of many awards, for his contribution to Science, Engineering and Technology. In 2017, he was awarded the Order of Mapungubwe in Silver, the highest civilian honour bestowed by the President of the Republic of South Africa. Fulufhelo has worked in areas of advanced modelling, information security, data science, and arti�cial intelligence, and is a Visiting Professor at the University of Johannesburg’s Institute of Intelligent Systems.

Professor Chris Nhlapo is the Vice-Chancellor and the Principal of Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT), a registered public higher education institution in Cape Town, South Africa. His previous position was as Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Research, Technology Innovation and Partnerships at CPUT.

He has undertaken numerous post-doctoral training sessions in subject speci�c �elds as well as in Research Management and Technology Transfer. He has trained, supervised and lectured across South African Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) and has occupied a number of senior positions at HEIs and Science Councils. He has presented numerous papers nationally and internationally and is well-known in the international research management �eld. He is a Fellow of the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) and worked within Commission IV where he focused on IUPAC Projects. He headed the Department of Chemistry at PUCHE before joining the National Research Foundation (NRF). At the NRF, he participated in building research capacity and capability, with speci�c relevance to HEIs through the development of national and international strategic partnerships. He led the development of strategic documents and guidelines strengthening HEIs management and leadership capabilities in establishing research collaboration support and sustaining research collaborations.

As Deputy Vice-Chancellor of Research, Technology and Innovation (RTI) at CPUT, Prof Nhlapo initiated the RTI portfolio through the development of the RTI Blueprint and supporting strategic documents and frameworks, thus setting the groundwork for research at CPUT through a focus on research uptake.

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Professor Jerome Amir Singh (BA, LLB, LLM, MHSc, PhD) is Adjunct Professor in the Dalla Lana School of Public Health , University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada and Honorary Research Fellow at the Howard College School of Law, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, South Africa. He is the Director of the Ethical, Legal, and Social Issues (ELSI) Advisory Services on Global Health Research and Development, and the Principal Investigator / Director of the Scienti�c Advisory Group on Emergencies (SAGE), which operates under the auspices of the Academy of Sciences of South Africa and South African Young Academy of Sciences. He serves as an ad hoc Consultant to several UN entities, including the World Health Organisation (WHO), UNAIDS, and UNICEF. He is the Co-Chairperson of the HIV Prevention Trial Network’s (HPTN) Ethics Working Group, and a member of the South African National AIDS Council (SANAC) Legal and Human Rights Technical Task Team. He currently serves on several advisory and oversight bodies, including the International Ethics Review Board

of Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), the WHO Ethics Review Committee for COVID-19, the WHO Access to COVID-19 Tools (ACT) Accelerator Ethics & Governance Working Group, and the WHO Technical Advisory Group (TAG) for Emergency Use Listing of COVID-19 vaccines.

He has previously co-directed the Ethical, Social, and Cultural Issues Advisory Services of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation's Grand Challenges in Global Health Initiative, and served as the Head of Ethics at CAPRISA. He has served on the Research Ethics Committees of the South African Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) and the South African Medical Research Council (SAMRC).

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Professor Stephanie Burton is Professor in Biochemistry, and Professor at Future Africa at the University of Pretoria (UP), as well as the immediate past Vice-Principal for Research and Postgraduate Education at UP, having served in that role from 2011 to 2020.

Professor Burton is the President and a Fellow of the Royal Society of South Africa (RSSA), Vice-President of the Academy of Science of South Africa (ASSAf), a Research Fellow for Universities South Africa (USAf), and the Chairperson of the Future Earth Regional O�ce for Southern Africa (FEROSA). Professor Burton holds an MSc in Organic Chemistry (1990) and a PhD in Biochemistry (1994) from Rhodes University. Her academic career started in Biochemistry and Biotechnology at Rhodes University, and then as Professor in Chemical Engineering at the University of Cape Town. She served as Director of Postgraduate Studies and Director of the Biocatalysis and Technical Biology Group at Cape Peninsula University of Technology before her UP appointment. Her research interests are in sustainability, applied biochemistry and biotechnology, and she has published widely and supervised numerous postgraduate students. She also has a strong interest in research capacity development, and research ethics and integrity, and she serves on several national bodies related to research and doctoral training. She is recognised for her leadership in managing research strategy and performance, postgraduate training, innovation activities, open science and science communication initiatives, and internationalisation programmes.

Prof Sarah Mosoetsa associate professor of Sociology, University of the Witwatersrand . Chief Executive O�cer, National Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences. Sarah Mosoetsa is an associate professor of Sociology at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits, Johannesburg) and Chief Executive O�cer at the National Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences (NIHSS).

She currently serves on a range of governing and advisory panels including, the University of Venda’s council, board of the National Research Foundation board, the Department of Employment and Labour’s Minimum Wage Commission, the Southern Centre for Inequality Studies’ advisory panel, and the Global Labour University’s committee, South Africa. Sarah has worked for several organizations including the Society, Work and Development Institute (SWOP), the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC), and the Development Bank of Southern Africa (DBSA). Since completing her PhD at Wits University in

2005, Sarah has published locally and internationally. She is author of “Eating from one pot: Dynamics of Survival in poor South African households” (Wits Press, 2011) and co-editor of “Labour in the Global South: challenges and alternatives for workers” (ILO, 2012). Her recent collaborative projects include “Precarious Labor in Global Perspective, International Labor and Working-class History” (Cambridge University Press, 2017), “New South African Review 6 - The Crisis of Inequality” (Wits Press 2018) and more recently, “Poverty and Inequality in South Africa” (Transformation: Critical Perspectives on Southern Africa, 2019). Sarah Mosoetsa is currently leading a COVID19 in townships research on the socio-economic and pollical impact and implications of the pandemic in South Africa. Her research interest includes amongst others labour studies, unemployment, inequality, and household dynamics.

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Professor Ahmed Bawa is the CEO of Universities South Africa. Until 2016, he was Vice-Chancellor and Principal of Durban University of Technology. He also served as Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Principal of the Durban Centre of the University of Natal (later to be the University of KwaZulu-Natal).

At the City University of New York, he was faculty member in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Hunter College and a member of the doctoral faculty at the Graduate Center. He was appointed Associate Provost for Curriculum Development. He holds a PhD in Theoretical Physics from Durham University in the UK.

As the Program O�cer for Higher Education in Africa with the Ford Foundation he led the Foundation’s African Higher Education Initiative. In this portfolio he worked in South Africa, Namibia, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Nigeria, Ghana, Egypt and Palestine. He serves on a number of advisory boards such as the

South African Institute of Distance Education, the Centre for the Aids Programme of Research of South Africa and the Higher Education Support Programme of the Open Society Foundation.

Mr Mahlubi Chief Mabizela is a Chief Director responsible for the Chief Directorate: University Education Policy and Research Support in the Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET), South Africa. The Chief Directorate’s (CD) main responsibilities are the development and implementation of higher education policies; measurement and analyses of research and creative outputs from universities; research support and, partly, transformation in higher education and the regulation and administration of registration of private higher education institutions in South Africa. In the past, and under his leadership, the CD had also been responsible for governance in the higher education sector.

Topical policies currently that emanate from the Higher Education branch, in which the CD is located, are the Policy Framework on Internationalisation of Higher Education in South Africa and the revised Language Policy Framework, both published in 2020. The CD is also responsible for international engagements in as far as they a�ect and require the involvement of the DHET’s higher education branch, such as the Southern African Development Cooperation (SADC); the African Union Commission; BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) and others. As such, Mahlubi currently serves in the Technical Committee on Higher Education and Training, Research and Development of SADC; the Education Working Group of G20 and various BRICS higher education structures, especially when the rotational chairship is on South Africa. Among other responsibilities, he currently serves in the boards of the National Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences and Higher Health.