Dr Fulufhelo Nelwamondo

Biography
Dr Fulufhelo Nelwamondo

Dr Fulufhelo Nelwamondo is the CEO of the National Research Foundation of South Africa. He holds a PhD in Electrical Engineering, with specialisation in Computational Intelligence from the University of the Witwatersrand. He was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University, and was the youngest South African to receive the prestigious Harvard-South Africa Fellowship. Fulufhelo is a registered Professional Engineer, a Senior Member of the Institute of Electronic and Electrical Engineers (IEEE), a senior member of the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM), amongst others.

Prior to his current role, he held executive positions at the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, and was a visiting Professor at UJ. He has served in several Boards, Councils, Ministerial Task Teams and Advisory committees. Fulufhelo is passionate about the Fourth Industrial Revolution, particularly in the potential impact its research and technologies can bring in the advancement of humankind, thereby addressing the social ills of poverty, unemployment and inequality.

He has been a recipient of many awards, for his contribution to Science, Engineering and Technology. In 2017, he was awarded the Order of Mapungubwe in Silver, the highest civilian honour bestowed by the President of the Republic of South Africa. Fulufhelo has worked in areas of advanced modelling, information security, data science, and artificial intelligence.