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Dr Ruben Cloete is a lecturer in the South African National Bioinformatics Institute at the University of the Western Cape, Cape Town, South Africa. As a lecturer, he has been primarily involved in postgraduate Bioinformatics training and undergraduate teaching, as well as coordinator of the Bioinformatics teaching modules. The courses he is driving include: Biotechnology (BTN315) undergraduate module at the University of the Western Cape; Introduction to Bioinformatics training course at the University of the Western Cape and the BSc Honours Molecular Pathology module at the Division of Medical Virology, Stellenbosch University. He has also been part of the Research and Review committee in planning the African Society for Bioinformatics and Computational Biology conference in 2017 and he also serves on the University Teaching and Learning Committee and is a member of the Science Faculty Board. Currently, he has been selected as secretary of the South African Society for Bioinformatics (SASBi) for 2018-current.

Dr Cloete's research is mainly focused on molecular modeling and drug design, with special focus on Structural Bioinformatics. His PhD dissertation investigated Mycobacterium tuberculosis metabolic pathways to identify drug targets in the genome of Mycobacterium tuberculosis. This research led to successful identification of nine Mycobacterium tuberculosis drug targets that is currently being exploited in drug discovery attempts and structure elucidation. Ongoing research projects include understanding mechanisms of drug resistance in HIV-1 integrase and Catalase peroxidase (KatG) as well as prioritizing polymorphisms in human drug metabolizing enzymes (NAT1 and NAT2). Another research project involves identifying disease causal variants of Parkinson's disease in South African families. His research area has also expanded to RNA-aptamer based technology development to diagnose Tuberculosis and Ebola infection and more recently understanding the effects of haplotype variation in the solute carrier transporter gene (SLC22A2) within the South African Xhosa population diagnosed with type 2 diabetes mellitus and its effects on drug transport. He has recently been awarded the SAMRC RCDI grant project as Co-PI that focuses on the use of computational methods to exploit SARS-COV2 coronavirus proteins to identify novel drugs to kill this deadly pathogen.

He completed his undergraduate (Bsc), Honors and Masters degrees at Stellenbosch University in Medical Biochemistry and his PhD (Bioinformatics) at the University of the Western Cape in the South African National Bioinformatics Institute.