Tshilidzi Marwala

He is currently Vice-Chancellor and Principal of the University of Johannesburg with effect from 1 January 2018. He was previously the Deputy Vice Chancellor for Research and Internationalization as well as the Dean of Engineering at the University of Johannesburg, a Professor of Electrical Engineering, the Carl and Emily Fuchs Chair of Systems and Control Engineering as well as the sarchi Chair of Systems Engineering at the University of the Witwatersrand

One of the books he co-authored on modelling interstate conflict has been translated into Chinese by the National Defense Industry Press. He is a fellow of TWAS, The World Academy of Sciences, Academy of Science of South Africa and African Academy of Sciences as well as a senior member of the IEEE and a distinguished member of the Association for Computing Machinery. His work and opinion have appeared in media such as New Scientist, Time Magazine, The Economist, CNN, BBC, Rhodes House and Oxford Union. In 2016 Tshilidzi Marwala delivered the Bernard Price Memorial Lecture in South Africa. With Stephen Hawking and Guy Laliberté he was a judge of the YouTube Space Lab competition.

In year 2006 to 2007 he was a visiting fellow at Harvard University and in the year 2007 to 2008, he was a visiting fellow of Wolfson College, Cambridge. In year 2009 he was a Visiting Scholar at the University of California, Berkeley Center for Studies in Higher Education. He is an honorary professor at the Nanjing Tech University as well as the Central South University in The People's Republic of China.

In 1995 he was employed at the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research as a project engineer. Marwala studied at the University of Pretoria and obtained his Masters in Mechanical Engineering in 1996. Between 1997 and 2000, Marwala went to the University of Cambridge to do a PhD in Artificial Intelligence, after which he became a post-doctoral research associate at the University of London's Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine where he worked on intelligence software

Marwala has received numerous awards and honors including winning the National Youth Science Olympiad and because of this he attended the 1989 London International Youth Science Forum, the Order of Mapungubwe, Case Western Reserve University Professional Achievement Award, The Champion of Research Capacity Development and Transformation at SA Higher Education Institutions, NSTF Award, Harvard-South Africa Fellowship, TWAS-AAS-Microsoft Award, and ACM Distinguished Member Award.

Tshilidzi Marwala (born 28 July 1971) is a South African mechanical engineer and computer scientist. He became Professor at the University of the Witwatersrand in 2003 and also chairperson of System and Control Engineering in South Africa. He has previously worked at the CSIR and for South African Breweries

Tshilidzi Marwala was born at Duthuni Village in the Tshivhase region of the Limpopo Province on 28 July 1971. He attended the Dimani Agricultural High School and matriculated from the Mbilwi Secondary School in 1989. In his matriculation year, Marwala entered and won the National Youth Science Olympiad and was sent to the United Kingdom to attend the London International Youth Science Fortnight.