Biographical Sketch

Professor Sudesh Sivarasu holds the DSI/NRF South African Research (SARChI) Chair in Biomedical Engineering & Innovation and is the Director of UCT’s Biomedical Engineering Research Centre. He is a professor of biomedical engineering at the University of Cape Town, Department of Human Biology. He is the creator of the innovative FrugalBiodesign™ methodology and has established award-winning labs, producing ground-breaking medical technologies. His research focuses on developing health technologies for low-resource settings, and he has supervised over 75 students in their post-graduate academic journey. Dr Sivarasu has an extensive patent portfolio with over 66 patent applications across various countries, and his innovation has led to the launch of four start-up companies from UCT's MedTech laboratories and several open-source innovations used over 16 countries. He was part of the South African National Ventilator Project, which led to the production of 20,000 ventilators during the COVID-19 pandemic.  He is leading the efforts on medical devices for future pandemics in the recently formed National Institute for Pandemic Preparedness and Prevention (NIP3). Dr. Sivarasu is an accomplished author with over 125 peer-reviewed publications and has received numerous awards, including the UCT Deputy Vice-Chancellor’s Award for Innovation and 23 other awards in 4 different continents. Recently, he edited the textbook on ‘Medical Device Innovation for Africa’. He is an elected member of the Global Young Academy and the South African Young Academy of Science.