Prof Yahya Choonara is an internationally recognized pharmaceutical scientist working at the forefront of producing advanced lifesaving 21st-century medicines that have an impact on global health in infectious, hereditary, and lifestyle diseases. As a pharmacist by profession, he co-founded the University of Witwatersrand’s Wits Advanced Drug Delivery Platform (WADDP) Research Unit, a flagship unit of Wits University and Africa’s largest in its domain. Based in a Low-Middle Income Country (LMIC) he has made major contribution to the pharmaceutical sciences validated in more than 427 ISI-accredited publications (>17300 citations). 

He is also a South African National Research Foundation (NRF) Chair in ‘Prototyping Advanced Drug Delivery Technologies, Nanomedicine and Functional Biomaterials for Regenerative Medicine’. He holds the largest pharmaceutical patent portfolio in Africa (51 in total and 38 granted internationally) aimed at providing patient-centric treatments in infectious diseases, oncology, neurotrauma, and special needs populations. 

To date, he is the first (and only) pharmacist in South Africa to receive several prestigious international awards such as the FIP International Pharmaceutical Federation Distinguished Pharmaceutical Science Award 2022 (a first in Africa over the >80-year history of the FIP representing >4M pharmacists globally), the Olusegun Obasanjo Prize 2021 (highest AAS award for influential scientists in Africa), the AU-TWAS Award, a nominee to the Tang Prize 2023 in Biopharmaceutical Innovation and the Kavli Prize 2023 in Nanoscience. Nationally, he received the National Science and Technology Forum (NSTF) Award in 2012, the National Academy of Pharmaceutical Sciences (APSSA) Best Publication Award (9 times), the SA Medical Research Council Award in 2018, and the South African DSI Top IP Creator Award 2021. His inventions include a WaferMat (the world’s fastest dissolving matrix), a VagiTab (to advance women reproductive health), Biomimetic Nanomedicine, and Bio-Inspired Neurotherapeutics.