New vice-chancellor for UJ
THE University of Johannesburg yesterday named Professor Tshilidzi Marwala, pictured, as its second vice-chancellor and principal.
He is set to succeed Professor Ihron Rensburg, who has been at the helm of the institution since its establishment in 2005.
Marwala’s appointment was made following a UJ council meeting on Thursday.
Professor Roy Marcus, UJ’s council chairperson, said the appointment of Marwala would further advance the university goal to become Africa’s epicentre of critical intellectual enquiry.
Marwala is currently the deputy vice-chancellor of research and internationalisation, and will begin his tenure on January 1.
“I am confident that Professor Marwala will further advance UJ’s vision of excellence in teaching, research and innovation‚ internationalisation, public scholarship and community engagement,” Marcus said.
Marwala is a professional engineer; a fellow of the World Academy of Sciences‚ the Academy of Science of South Africa‚ the African Academy of Sciences and the South African Academy of Engineering; a senior member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers; and a distinguished member of the Association for Computing Machinery.
“Professor Marwala’s excellent academic pedigree and extensive international experiences will be vital to deepening and widening on our strategic goal of Pan African and global excellence and stature‚” added Marcus.
Marwala’s research interests are multi-disciplinary and include the theory and application of computational intelligence to engineering‚ computer science‚ finance‚ social science and medicine. As a B-rated researcher‚ he has published nine books‚ over 300 papers in journals‚ proceedings‚ book chapters and magazines and holds three international patents.
He is an associate editor of the International Journal of Systems Science (Taylor and Francis Publishers) and has been a reviewer for more than 40 ISI journals.
His global network is wide and includes being a visiting scholar at Harvard University‚ at the University of California at Berkeley‚ at the Wolfson College of University of Cambridge and at Nanjing Tech University.
Marwala is also a member of the programming council of the Faculty of Electrical Engineering at the Silesian University of Technology in Poland.
Marcus added: “With Professor Ihron Rensburg the university has had a remarkable journey that has seen it become the national standard-bearer for transformation, equity, access, and Pan African and global excellence.
“As a result, the university has become a leading African university with global stature that is now ranked seventh among Africa’s universities, and ranked within the top 2.3% of universities in the world as published in the QS World University Rankings for 2017/2018.”