Executive Summary

I am a seasoned and experienced pharmacist (over 25 years in pharmaceutical manufacturing, pharmaceutical research and development, clinical practice, public health and academics.) with BPharm (1997), MPharm (2011) and PhD in Bioinformatics (2016). I also have post-graduate certificates in clinical research and drug development from the University of Basel, Basel Switzerland.

Currently, I am an Associate Professor at the Pharmacology and Clinical Pharmacy unit of the School of Pharmacy, University of the Western Cape and program manager for an online Masters in Pharmacy Administration and Policy Regulation in the same school. I teach basic and clinical pharmacology as well as quantitative and clinical pharmacokinetics to second-, third- and fourth-year pharmacy undergraduate students. I also teach pharmaceutical biotechnology, which covers the production, quality control and clinical use of biopharmaceuticals and biologics. I have brought my experiences and skills, acquired from over 25 years of practising in various aspects of pharmacy, to bear on the content of and approach to my teaching. The students attest to the diversity of my knowledge and my ability to simplify complex concept engagingly and entertainingly. This is evidenced by the students' evaluation of my teaching. 

As an active postgraduate and undergraduate teacher I am involved in the development of Teaching and Learning strategies (content and methodology) as outlined above. I have drawn from my experience and evidence gathered from student feedback to refine my approach to learning and teaching. I have implemented innovative ideas for curriculum development and renewal in alignment with graduate attributes and professional societies as seen in the industry-relevant module content update. I have shown evidence of the use of technologies for the improvement of student learning by introducing AI-assisted learning in quantitative pharmacokinetics. I continually assess student learning needs through in-class feedback and formal student evaluation to improve my teaching.

I am constantly reviewing assessments to align with defined learning outcomes and weighting the rigour of the assessment viz-a-viz the defined NFQ level of the student. Regarding professional development, I have been attending regular sessions with Dr Samuel Lundie on current learning and teaching practices. I investigated student learning needs to improve teaching practice through weekly reflective essays by the students, which highlights their challenges in the topics previously completed.

I have demonstrated scholarship in teaching and learning by implementing, evaluating and publishing a teaching and learning strategy during the COVID-19 pandemic. My unique experience spiced visual teaching and learning philosophy and style has addressed the needs of students, improved the current curriculum in selected modules, infused my research process and output into the content of my lecture, using innovative technology and modern social media platforms, and sensitized transformed students to seek fulfilling careers as pharmacist and postgraduate studies in cutting edge field of pharmacology.  My learning and teaching have been recognized by other institutions that have invited me to facilitate training workshops and be part of postgraduate diploma courses in the field of drug discovery, medicine development and medicine management in clinical trials.

In addition to my teaching duties, I also lead the Computational Pharmacology and Cheminformatics Group at the School of Pharmacy, University of the Western Cape. My research focuses on computational drug discovery and design, analysis and interpretation of chemical and bioactivity data using cheminformatics, bioinformatics, and data analytics techniques to discover and design novel drug candidates for infectious and non-infectious diseases. As a formulator at heart, we are also involved in polymer material modelling for novel drug delivery systems.  

My research is in a new and cutting-edge area of science: cheminformatics, artificial intelligence (AI) and big data analytics for drug discovery and development. Due to the dearth of knowledge and skills in this relatively new area, especially as it relates to drug development, the number of citations of my work is growing steadily at a good pace. The number of citations that was 95 at my last promotion is currently 243 (a 61% increase in less than two years). The h-index has increased from 5 to 9 and it is expected to grow beyond 9 in the next couple of months as knowledge and skills increase rapidly in the area of cheminformatics, artificial intelligence (AI), and big data analytics for drug discovery and development. See data from Google Scholar below. Aside from the citations of my publications, the impact of my research has also been demonstrated by overwhelming invitations (many of which I have to decline because I do not have the time due to a high teaching load) to review manuscripts by various journals including ACS infectious diseases, ChemMedChem, Journal of chemical information and modelling, Journal of molecular modelling, Plos One, Frontier in Pharmacology etc.

I have begun to mentor postgraduate students since 2017 and my research group is contributing to the prospect of developing drug candidates by applying a niche approach of cheminformatics coupled with computational simulation and modelling, data analytic techniques and artificial intelligence (AI) to the enormous data generated from drug discovery projects. I also mentor postgraduate students in the field of medicine regulatory sciences. Given the nascent nature of my research niche of cheminformatics and the work-based and professional nature of the medicine regulatory sciences that I am majorly involved with, I have to mentor postgraduate students from undergraduate to Masters level. This is because there is a dearth of potential PhD candidates in these fields (i.e. cheminformatics and medicine regulatory sciences). Therefore my postgraduate students have been majorly Masters students whom I am training in the new field of cheminformatics and working professionals whom I am training in medicine regulatory sciences. 

The novel nature of my research approach to drug discovery has led to my invitation as a keynote speaker, panel speaker or guest lecturer to several conferences, workshops and postgraduate programs within and outside South Africa. I have secured research funding from sources within the university and externally to pursue my research goal of developing a “de-risk computational drug discovery and development pipeline” in Africa. My research has attracted funding from two international funding agencies, and one local funding agency. Although the field of cheminformatics is relatively new, my research outputs in this field have been impactful at a national and international level as evidenced by current citation numbers and h-index, which is expected to increase with the increased adoption of cheminformatic approaches.

The scope of my responsibilities as Programme Coordinator of Online Masters in Pharmacy Administration and Policy Regulation has increased since my last promotion. The School of Pharmacy, University of the Western Cape have been running this online Master's programme in medicine regulatory sciences for the past 13 years. My involvement has significantly increased the impact of the programme. The number of students recruited has increased and the reach of the programme continues to increase beyond the South Africa and SADC region. Notably, the programme has trained over 30 personnel from National Regulatory Authorities (NRA) across Africa including countries like South Africa, Kenya, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Lesotho, Namibia etc. In addition, we have commenced a postgraduate diploma in Medicine Regulatory Sciences that equips participants with the skills needed to play a significant role in the development, manufacture, quality assurance, licensing and ongoing pharmacovigilance of medicines and medical devices. Most recently, in line with the Africa CDC’s vision for talent development for local medicines and vaccine manufacturing to achieve sustainability of medicine supply in Africa, I co-led a collaborative institutional engagement between the School of Pharmacy, UWC and Technological University Dublin, Ireland to jointly design a new collaborative Biopharmaceutical and Vaccine Manufacturing Course. We also reviewed our current postgraduate Regulatory Sciences programmes to align with the changing landscape of medicines regulation. This collaboration has led to the signing of a MOU between the two institutions and will strategically position its capacity development programmes for private local pharmaceutical and medical devices manufacturing companies and National Regulatory Authorities (NRAs) in Africa.

My professional leadership has been demonstrated and evidenced in the past year by my nomination and appointment as a member of the “talent development committee” of the  Partnership for African Vaccine Manufacturing, Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention. The committee successfully developed “A vaccine research and manufacture Competency Framework” for the Africa CDC. Secondly, I was recently nominated by the Southern African Regional Universities Association, on behalf of the SADC secretariat, to chair a working group that will “Develop a Curriculum Structure and Outline for a SADC Industrial Pharmacy Fellowship Programme” funded by Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH. As proof of my professional leadership in my field of research, I continue to receive invitations to review many manuscripts for publication and examine Masters and PhD theses within South Africa, in Africa and globally.  

I have demonstrated excellence in community engagement through various sustained community programs that address topical issues related to my field of teaching and research. An example is an information session for religious leaders on Covid-19 vaccination. About institutional and professional leadership, I have taken various leadership responsibilities both at the School of Pharmacy and the pharmacy/bioinformatics societies. 

At this point in my career, my primary interests are in computational drug design and development, data analytics and artificial intelligence for drug design and development, and pharmacogenomics in therapeutics for communicable diseases. I have pursued these interests to date by conducting computational simulations and experiments for drug discovery and development for infectious diseases in collaboration with research groups in and outside Africa.  In the long term, I will continue to enhance my teaching and learning skills, plan to organize a cheminformatics conference and continue to seek external research funding for our projects.  

Finally, I intend to continue to grow our online regulatory sciences programmes in scope, size and quality until they go beyond African recognition to global recognition. In addition, I will mid-wife the birth of a new professional training programme in pharmaceutical and biopharmaceutical manufacturing in response to the Africa CDC's goal to increase local production of pharmaceutical and biopharmaceutical products in Africa thus increasing the contribution of UWC to development in Africa.