NITheCS operates in an independent environment, with Stellenbosch University providing administrative support. This is critical in the South African (and African) context to ensure non-alliance with a particular institution and to maintain an independent identity.
The governance system of NITheCS is that of a national Centre of Excellence (CoE), which is subject to the notarisation of a binding contract between the granter, the National Research Foundation (NRF), and the grantee, namely Stellenbosch University.
Leadership structure
The leadership structure of NITheCS is designed to ensure strategic coherence, research excellence, and effective regional implementation.
It comprises three interconnected bodies:
Steering Committee
Steercom provides overall strategic and operational direction, setting the vision and priorities of the Institute while monitoring progress at a high level.
The Scientific Advisory Committee (SAC) works alongside Steercom. It shapes the Institute’s strategic direction, with a particular emphasis on guiding the focus and development of its research programmes.
Anna Scaife is Professor of Radio Astronomy at the University of Manchester and Head of the Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics Interferometry Centre of Excellence. Her research focuses on the origin and evolution of cosmic magnetic fields, radio astronomy instrumentation, and big data methods in astrophysics. She has played leading roles in major international projects, including the Square Kilometre Array (SKA), where she led the imaging pipeline group and contributed to the design of computing for the European SKA Regional Centre. She has also been Principal Investigator for the LOFAR magnetism key science project and part of the commissioning team for the LOFAR telescope. Prof Scaife is committed to global research collaboration and capacity building. She leads programmes supporting scientists in Southern Africa and Latin America and has developed a UK–South Africa initiative in big data and data science. She is also Co-Director of Policy@Manchester. Her contributions have been recognised with numerous honours, including the 2019 Jackson-Gwilt Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society and selection as one of the World Economic Forum’s Top 30 Scientists under 40 (2014). Publications | Wikipedia page
Bioinformatics Prof Janet Kelso (Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Germany)
Prof Janet Kelso is a South African computational biologist and Group Leader of the Minerva Research Group for Bioinformatics at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. She is internationally recognised for her pioneering work in comparative genomics, particularly in analysing and comparing ancient human DNA with that of present-day populations. Her research has provided key insights into human evolution, genetic diversity, and the legacy of archaic hominins in modern genomes. Prof Kelso has an h-index of 77, reflecting the wide impact of her contributions to the field. Website | Wikipedia page
David Sumpter is a Professor of Applied Mathematics at Uppsala University. He is also the author of Four Ways of Thinking (2023), The Ten Equations that Rule the World (2020), Outnumbered (2018), Collective Animal Behaviour (2010) and Soccermatics (2016). His research work, including more than 100 scientific articles, covers everything from the inner workings of fish schools and ant colonies, through social psychology and segregation in society, to machine learning and artificial intelligence. Prof Sumpter has consulted for leading football clubs and national teams. He works actively with outreach to schools, industry and the social sector. His talks at Google, TedX, the Oxford Mathematics Public Lecture and The Royal Institution are available online. He has featured in documentaries for Amazon Prime and written for The Economist 1843, The Telegraph, The Guardian, The I-Paper, The Conversation, Prospect, Mathematics Today, Barcelona Innovation Hub and FourFourTwo magazine. Website | Publications
Earth Systems & Climate Change Modelling Prof Veronika Eyering (DLR – Uni Bremen, Germany)
Veronika Eyring is Head of the Earth System Model Evaluation and Analysis Department at the German Aerospace Center (DLR) Institute of Atmospheric Physics and Professor of Climate Modelling at the University of Bremen. Veronika’s research focuses on improving climate models and projections with machine learning and spaceborne Earth observations for actionable climate science and technology assessments in aeronautics, space, transport, and energy research. She has authored many peer-reviewed journal articles and has contributed to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessments since many years, including her role as Coordinating Lead Author for Chapter 3 of “Human influence on the climate system” in the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report of Working Group I published in 2021.
Veronika is involved in the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP) since many years, for example through her roles as Chair of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP) Panel (2014-2020) and member of scientific steering committees including the Working Group on Coupled Modeling (WGCM) from 2008-2018. She is corresponding PI of the European Research Council (ERC) Synergy Grant on “Understanding and Modelling the Earth System with Machine Learning (USMILE)”, Fellow of the European Lab for Learning & Intelligent Systems (ELLIS), and Member of the Scientific Advisory Board of Worldfund. Veronika received the German Research Foundation (DFG) Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize in 2021 for her significant contributions to improving the understanding and accuracy of climate projections through process-oriented modelling and model evaluation (see film portrait here). She urged world leaders to take action at the COP27 World Leaders Summit Opening Ceremony in 2022. She received the AGU Ambassador Award and was inducted in the group of AGU Fellows in 2024, recognising her outstanding contributions to climate science, the research community and society (see 2024 Honors Ceremony here). In 2024, the Technical University of Munich (TUM) appointed her as TUM Distinguished Affiliated Professor. Veronika maintains a strong collaboration with the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR, Boulder, CO, USA) as Affiliate Scientist.
Mathematics Prof Marino Gran (University of Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium)
He has visited South Africa on numerous occasions. His research focuses on category theory and algebra. He has made significant contributions to Mathematics and Physics in Belgium, including serving as President of the Institut de Recherche en Mathématique et Physique (IRMP) at the Université Catholique de Louvain during 2015–2018 and again from 2021–2024. Since 2017, he has also been a member of the International Category Theory Advisory Board. Website | Publications
Quantitative Finance Prof Erik Schlögl (University of Technology (UTS) Sydney, Australia)
Erik Schlögl is a Professor in the School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences at the University of Technology, Sydney (UTS), Australia, focusing on Financial Mathematics and Quantitative Finance. Erik received his doctorate in Economics from the University of Bonn, Germany, for work on term structure models and the pricing of fixed income derivatives and has gained broad-based experience in computational financial engineering. He has consulted for financial institutions and software developers in Europe, Australia and in the US, and served as an expert witness in cases before the Federal Court of Australia. His research interests cover a broad area of quantitative finance, in particular model calibration, interest rate term structure modelling, credit risk and the integration of multiple sources of risk. His research articles have been published in a number of international journals, including Finance & Stochastics, Quantitative Finance, Risk, the Journal of Banking and Finance and the Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control. He is also the chairman of the organising committee of the Sydney Financial Mathematics Workshop (SFMW) and one of the co-organisers of the long-running conference Quantitative Methods in Finance (QMF). He is an honorary professor at the University of Cape Town and also holds an honorary appointment at the University of Johannesburg. Previously, he was employed at the University of New South Wales, Australia, and the University of Bonn, Germany. He is a passionate photographer, especially of wildlife, underwater and on dry land.
Prof Sophie Dabo-Niang earned her PhD in 2002 from Pierre and Marie Curie University in Paris and is currently a Full Professor of Statistics at the University of Lille. Her research spans functional statistics, spatial statistics, nonparametric and semi-parametric estimation, and mathematical epidemiology. Prof Dabo-Niang is actively engaged in advancing mathematics in Africa, having supervised numerous doctoral students across the continent, introduced spatial statistics in Senegal, and coordinated scientific events to promote mathematics – particularly among young women. She chairs the Developing Countries Committee of the European Mathematical Society and serves on the scientific committee of the Centre International de Mathématiques Pures et Appliquées (CIMPA). She is also an editor of the Revista Colombiana de Estadística. Her contributions have been recognised by organisations such as Femmes et Mathématiques and the African Women in Mathematics Association.
Sushmita Mitra is a prominent Indian computer scientist. She currently serves as a Full Professor (HAG) and has previously led the Machine Intelligence Unit at the Indian Statistical Institute in Kolkata. Her research spans topics such as data science, machine learning, bioinformatics, soft computing, and medical imaging. She has been honoured as a fellow of IEEE for her innovative neuro-fuzzy and hybrid techniques in pattern recognition. Additionally, she is a Fellow of all three science academies and the engineering academy of India, as well as several foreign academies.
Artificial Intelligence Anita Gurumurthy (IT for Change, Bengaluru, Karnataka, India)
Anita Gurumurthy is the founding member and Executive Director of IT for Change, where she leads research and advocacy on data and AI governance, platform regulation, and feminist approaches to digital justice. She is a Visiting Fellow at the UN University International Institute for Global Health and serves as an expert on several global bodies, including the T20’s digital transformation track and the UN CSTD Working Group on Data Governance. Ms Gurumurthy has previously served on the High-Level Committee of NetMundial+10 under Brazil’s leadership, the UN Secretary-General’s 10-Member Group on Technology Facilitation, and the Paris Peace Forum’s working group on algorithmic governance. She is also a Board member of global justice organisations such as the ETC Group and sits on academic boards including the Tech & Policy Lab at the University of Western Australia. She contributes actively to both academic and media platforms.
Artificial Intelligence Prof Spenta R Wadia (International Centre for Theoretical Sciences (ICTS-TIFR), India)
Prof Spenta R. Wadia is an Indian theoretical physicist whose research spans particle physics, quantum field theory, string theory, quantum gravity, and complex systems. He has made foundational contributions, including the Gross–Witten–Wadia transition in lattice gauge theory, black hole solutions in 2D string theory, and advances in holographic descriptions of black holes. Prof Wadia is the founding Director of the International Centre for Theoretical Sciences (ICTS-TIFR) in Bangalore and currently holds the Infosys Homi Bhabha Chair Professorship there. He previously served as Distinguished Professor at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, where he also chaired the Department of Theoretical Physics. His international roles have included appointments at Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Study, CERN, and KITP. A recipient of the TWAS Physics Prize (2004), the ICTP Prize (1995), and the J.C. Bose Fellowship, Prof Wadia is a Fellow of all the Indian science academies, TWAS, and was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2024. He continues to play a leadership role in international collaborations, advisory boards, and science outreach initiatives across India and beyond.
The insights and guidance from both Steercom and the SAB inform the work of the Executive Management Committee (Exco).
This committee includes the NITheCS Director, Heads of the NITheCS Nodes, and the NITheCS Associate Representative. Exco is responsible for embedding NITheCS within South African universities and relevant institutions across its nodes, ensuring that regional activities align with the broader vision and mission of the Institute. The Heads of Nodes work closely with the Director to ensure that each Node contributes meaningfully to NITheCS’s goals, particularly in advancing multidisciplinary research, training, and engagement.
Director: Francesco Petruccione (Stellenbosch University)
Head of Node – Gauteng: Joao Rodrigues (University of the Witwatersrand)
Head of Node – KwaZulu-Natal: Sunil Maharaj (University of KwaZulu-Natal)
Head of Node – Eastern Cape & Free State: Azwinndini Muronga (Nelson Mandela University)
Head of Node – Western Cape: William Horowitz (University of Cape Town)
Head of Node – North: Du Toit Strauss (North-West University)
Based at Stellenbosch University, the Hub serves as the central coordinating unit and is responsible for:
Administrative operations and governance support
Communications and stakeholder engagement
Coordination of research, training, and capacity development initiatives
Organising seminars, collaborative projects, and interdisciplinary programmes
Branches and Nodes
NITheCS includes branches at all public universities and affiliated research institutions in South Africa. These branches are grouped into five regional nodes to enhance coordination and regional relevance:
Gauteng
North
KwaZulu-Natal
Eastern Cape and Free State
Western Cape
This node structure ensures that NITheCS is locally active while remaining nationally integrated.
Heads of Nodes and Branch Heads
Each Node is led by a Head of Node, and each Branch by a Branch Head. Together, they play a central role in:
Facilitating NITheCS programmes and events in their regions
Engaging local research communities
Promoting collaboration aligned with NITheCS’s national goals
Contributing to multidisciplinary research, training, and public engagement
The Heads of Nodes work closely with the Director to ensure that each Node contributes meaningfully to NITheCS’s strategic vision. The Branch Heads manage the activities of their respective institutions.
The Heads of Nodes and Branch Heads are below:
Gauteng
Head of Node: João Rodrigues (University of the Witwatersrand)
