Prof 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 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 Officer 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.
Ahmed Bawa holds a Ph.D. in Theoretical Physics from the University of Durham, in the UK. He has published in the areas of high-energy physics; nuclear physics; higher education and society; and science and society.
Ina Smith specialises in the adoption of open science and open access publishing in the global South, with specific emphasis on Africa.
She holds a Masters’ Degree from the University of Pretoria in Computer Integrated Education, a Higher Education Teaching Diploma, and an Honours Degree in Library and Information Science. She has vast experience working in open access during her employment at the University of Pretoria and Stellenbosch University in repositories, journal publishing and conference publishing.
She is currently employed as a planning manager at the Academy of Science of SA, where she is working on a DST/ASSAf/ICSU/CODATA project for an African Open Science Platform. She is also a DOAJ Ambassador for the southern Africa region. In 2014 she received the LIASA President’s Acknowledgement for Exceptional Contribution (2014), in 2011 she was a Runner - up in the international EPT Award for Open Access, and in 2016 she was awarded LIASA Librarian of the Year.
She has a keen interest in the research process in general, and are actively promoting all to become digital citizens and to remain lifelong researchers and self - learners. Translating difficult concepts into digestible format for researchers to integrate into their day to day work a passion of hers.
Gareth O'Neill is president of the European Council of Doctoral Candidates and Junior Researchers (Eurodoc). He is interested in science policy for researchers and in improving the implementation and skills training of Open Science across Europe. Gareth was involved in the Dutch National Plan for Open Science, is an expert on Intersectoral Mobility and Open Science for the European Commission, and is a member of the H2020 Advisory Group on Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions.
He lives in Amsterdam and can often be seen sailing in a traditional Irish boat on Lake Ijsselmeer.
Prof Abdon Atangana is a leading applied Mathematics professor at the UFS. He obtained his honours and master’s degrees from the Department of Applied Mathematics at the UFS with distinction. He obtained his PhD degree in applied mathematics from the Institute for Groundwater Studies.
He serves as an editor for 18 international journals and is also a reviewer of more than 200 international accredited journals and has been awarded the world champion of peer review twice, in 2016 and 2017. He also serves on more than 20 editorial boards of applied mathematics and mathematics. He has presented and participated in more than 20 international conferences and has been invited as plenary speaker in more than 10 international conferences of applied mathematics and mathematics. His research interests are methods and applications of partial and ordinary differential equations, fractional differential equations, perturbation methods, asymptotic methods, iterative methods, and groundwater modelling.
Prof Atangana is the founder of the fractional calculus with non-local and non-singular kernels popular in applied mathematics today. Since 2013 he has published in 165 international accredited journals of applied mathematics, applied physics, geo-hydrology and bio-mathematics. He is also the single author of two books in Academic Press Elsevier.
Mr Glenn Truran is the Director of SANLiC and is based in the SANLiC office in Cape Town.
After graduating from the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits), he worked as an educator in South Africa and England. He has worked for poverty alleviation non-profit organisations for most of his career and has over 20 years’ experience at a managerial level. He has a BA and two post graduate diplomas from Wits, the first in education and the second in public policy and development administration. He also has an MBA from the University of Cape Town.
Dora Ackerman is qualified in both Library and Information Science and Information Technology with the background of 28 years working in the Higher Education arena and the expertise of working on Information Systems within the Library and Information Service environment, therefore ensuring access to academic and scholarly information.
She has a M.A. (Higher Education Studies) (Cum Laude) from the University of the Free State (2007) and a National Diploma: Information Technology (Cum Laude) from Technikon Free State (2001). She has served as Deputy University Librarian: Electronic Resources & LIS Systems at the Central University of Technology since 2013.
Dora has traveled widely on benchmarking visits, including a 2009 tour of Scandinavian countries to investigate how these institutions implement ICT infrastructures within libraries, and a recent visit to four Singapore academic libraries.
Dora received the Library and Information Association of South Africa (LIASA) Librarian of the year award in 2008.
Charlie Maphuntshane Molepo is the Deputy Director responsible for Research and Scholarly Communications at the University of the Free State Library and Information Services. He is responsible for the implementation of the Open Access initiatives at the university, a qualified teacher and librarian who has immense experience in library operations in higher education.
Charlie started his career as a teacher and joined Vista University as Head: Circulation Services, both at East Rand and VUDEC campuses. He later joined University of Natal as Head: Killie Campbell Africana Library. In 2003 he was appointed at University of Johannesburg as User Empowerment Librarian. In 2005 he started at UKS as Customer Liaison and rose through the ranks to Executive Manager for Sales & Marketing. In 2010 he rejoined University of KwaZulu-Natal as Head: Technical Services. Before joining the UFS he was the International Account Director for Bertram Group (Dawson Books UK).
Charlie has vast knowledge in library systems, the publishing environment and is an Open Access activist.
Cornelle Scheltema-Van Wyk started her career as faculty librarian at the University of the Free State in 2003. She soon developed an interest in library systems and technology and worked as systems and website librarian from 2005 - 2014. The UFS signed the Berlin Declaration on Open Access in 2011 and since then Cornelle became involved the promotion and support of OA at the institution, including the development and management of the institutional repository, KovsieScholar, and the online journal management and publication platform, KovsieJournals.
Currently Assistant Director: Scholarly Communications at the UFS Library and Information Services, she recently completed her M.Phil. in Digital Curation at the University of Cape Town, and is involved in developments in digital scholarship and e-research at the UFS.