Professor Fulufhelo Nemavhola is a Professor in Mechanical Engineering and rated scholar by the National Research Foundation. Before joining DUT, Prof Nemavhola was the Director of School of Engineering at the University of South Africa. Before appointed as the Director of the school, Fulufhelo was the Head of Department in the Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering. Before appointed as the HOD in the department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, Prof Nemavhola worked as the Associate Chair of Department in the same department. In addition to being a registered professional engineer (PrEng) with the Engineering Council of South Africa, Prof Nemavhola is also a chartered engineer (CEng) registered with the Engineering Council of the United Kingdom (ECUK). Prof Nemavhola was selected as the member of South African Young Academy (SAYAS) in 2018. He graduated with Bachelor of Science (Mechanical Engineering) and Master of Science (Mechanical Engineering) degrees at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa. Prof Nemavhola’s interest in academic research then steered him to pursue a doctorate from the Department of Cardiothoracic Surgery of the University of Cape Town. Currently, his research focus is in the areas of mechanobiology, soft tissue mechanics, computational biomechanics, and engineering education particularly e-learning. Prof Nemavhola began his career at Spoornet (now Transnet Freight Rail) where he was appointed as the Candidate Engineer.

He held various positions, including those of senior engineer and design engineer in private and parastatal companies before joining the academia. Prof Nemavhola is involved extensively in research, having authored, co-authored, and presented not less than 60 papers in both national and international fora. Prof Nemavhola has his heart set on the development of rural villages using technology. As the career dictates, Prof Nemavhola is a founder and currently heading a research group in Biomedical Engineering at the University of South Africa. He is currently supervising and co-supervising not less than 18 postgraduates’ students who are all registered through the Unisa Biomedical Engineering Research Group (Unisa) and other universities. Prof Nemavhola has worked with number of research collaborators in various international countries. In his research career, Prof Nemavhola was able to attract multimillion research grants from both internally and externally. The Unisa Biomedical Engineering Group was current on the news for being the only Biomechanics Lab in Africa that is part of the global initiative for standardising the mechanical characterisation of soft tissues.