Professor Genevieve Langdon

Professor Genevieve Langdon is a professor and deputy head of the mechanical engineering department at the University of Cape Town (UCT). She obtained her PhD from the University of Liverpool in 2003 for work on the response of offshore structures to gas explosions.

Langdon has worked at UCT since 2004. Since her appointment, Langdon has successfully supervised more than 50 honours projects, 10 MSc students and three PhD students. Her current research interests are the blast protection of structures and the use of sustainable materials in explosion-resistant applications. Her work seeks to save lives through improved protection, and reduce the environmental impact of blast protection systems.

She has a C1 rating from the NRF and has co-authored more than 60 journal papers, in addition to numerous conference papers and book chapters. She has an h-index of 23 and has been cited more than 1 250 times. A founder member of the South African Young Academy of Science, Langdon has worked in outreach for the next generation of science learners. In 2014, she was awarded the Southern African Association for the Advancement of Science silver medal for outstanding research by a person under the age of 40.

Langdon is the director of the Blast Impact and Survivability Research Unit. She is also a chartered engineer and member of the Institute of Mechanical Engineers. She is the secretary of the International Society of Impact Engineering, and serves on the editorial board of the International Journal of Impact Engineering.