Dr Mazithulela hired as Nust Pro Vice Chancellor Dr Gatsha Mazithulela
Dr Gatsha Mazithulela

Dr Gatsha Mazithulela

Auxilia Katongomara, Chronicle Reporter
DISTINGUISHED scientist, Dr Gatsha Mazithulela has been appointed National University of Science and Technology (Nust) Pro Vice Chancellor, in charge of innovation and business development.

Nust director of communications Mr Felix Moyo on Sunday confirmed Dr Mazithulela’s appointment.

“Yes, Dr Gatsha Mazithulela has been appointed Pro Vice Chancellor Innovation and Business Development. He assumes duty tomorrow (yesterday),” said Mr Moyo.

Dr Mazithulela is a senior business executive with over 10 years of strategy and board-level experience in diverse high technology industrial research environments including large-scale nuclear, chemical and biotechnology energy industries. Listed among his achievements are the Fogarty Aids International Training and Research Scholarship at Johns Hopkins University in the United States (2004), Rockefeller Foundation pre-doctoral fellowship (1995 to 1998), post-doctoral research fellowship at the University of Nottingham, and postdoctoral scientist at DuPont Incorporated in the USA.

He was awarded support from the UK-South Africa Science and Technology Research Fund in 1997. His interests extend to current affairs and military strategy.

Dr Mazithulela was born in 1971 and did secondary education in Bulawayo and was among the 270 pioneers at Nust when the institution opened in 1991.

He graduated with a Bachelor of Applied Science (Hons) in biology and biochemistry in 1994 and received a Rockefeller Foundation doctoral scholarship to study genetic engineering at the John Innes Centre in the United Kingdom.

Dr Mazithulela graduated with a PhD in genetic engineering at the age of 27 and worked in the US and the UK. He obtained an MBA in London.

He created his own piece of history by becoming the first Nust graduate to obtain a PhD in 1998 after accepting a challenge from the institution’s founding Vice-Chancellor Phineas Makhurane.

He holds an MBA in the valuation of new technologies using real options in financial mathematics.

He has served as an innovation manager for CSIR’s Biochemtek division, director of the South African Aids Vaccine Initiative at the South African Medical Research Council and managing director of Secure Plan Investment Limited in the UK.

The Zimbabwean technocrat served as a board member for the Cape Biotechnology Trust, Anvir Biopharmaceticals (Pty) Ltd and chairperson of Elevation Biotechnology (Pty) Ltd.

He also served as National Research Foundation of South Africa vice-president, Nuclear Technology Products (Pty) Limited, at the South African Nuclear Energy Corporation corporate development consultant.

Since his return home, Dr Mazithulela has become one of the successful farmers in Matabeleland region.

Dr Mazithulela has also worked at the Office of the President and Cabinet (OPC) as a principal director and also worked in former NUST Vice Chancellor, the late Professor Lindela Ndlovu’s office.

The researcher and scientist also served briefly as an Acting Permanent Secretary for the then Ministry of Economic development and Investment Promotion under Minister, Simon Khaya Moyo in 2014 after his stint at the OPC running the Senior Minister’s office.

He was recently re-appointed vice-chairperson of the African Commission on Nuclear Energy (Afcone) following his appointment in 2015.

He also chairs the Chemical Weapons Convention under the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons Act 1998.

In 2016, there were media reports that former Minister of Higher and Tertiary Education, Science and Technology Development, Professor Jonathan Moyo, was frustrating the appointment of Dr Mazithulela as Pro Vice Chancellor at the university.

By then, he worked at Nust Technopark, a business development unit of the institution.

@AuxiliaK

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