Professor Kelly Chibale

With a background and PhD in the field of synthetic organic chemistry, Prof Kelly Chibale’s research focuses on infectious disease drug discovery.

He is the Founder and Director of the University of Cape Town Drug Discovery & Development (H3D) Centre as well as the South African Medical Research Council/UCT Drug Discovery & Development Research Unit at UCT and holds the Neville Isdell Chair in African-centric Drug Discovery & Development.

Some of his recent accolades include being named as one of the World’s 50 Greatest Leaders by Fortune magazine (2018); one of the world’s top 60 most influential/inspirational leaders in the pharmaceutical industry on The Medicine Maker’s 2020 and 2021 Power Lists; one of the 25 standout voices in African public health by Harvard University’s Public Health magazine in 2022 and being elected to the United States National Academy of Medicine in 2024 and National Academy of Science in 2025.

In 2023, he was appointed as the editor-in-chief of ACS Medicinal Chemistry Letters, making history as the first editor-in-chief from Africa of an ACS journal.

Over the last eight years, he has produced 92 peer-reviewed journal articles and two book chapters.