Prof Yahya Choonara
Professor of Pharmaceutical Sciences

Location
South AfricaUniversity of the Witwatersrand

Departments
Health Sciences
Pharmacy and Pharmacology
Work and Research
Professor Yahya Choonara is internationally recognised as an outstanding global pharmaceutical scientist working for 16 years at the forefront of the pharmaceutical sciences to produce advanced life-saving medicines that have an impact on global health (i.e., the best science for infectious, hereditary and lifestyle diseases). A Pharmacist by profession, in 2007 he co-founded the University of Witwatersrand’s Wits Advanced Drug Delivery Platform (WADDP) Research Unit, Africa’s largest Research Unit in its domain. Based in a Lower/Middle-Income Country (LMIC) he has contributed enormously to basic and translational pharmaceutical research focusing on intellectual property in the design of novel drug delivery systems, nanomedicines, functional biomaterials, and regenerative medicine to produce 21st Century patient centric medicines for disease prevention/treatment and has over 360 ISI-accredited publications to his name. Professor Choonara is a Personal Professor of Pharmaceutical Sciences and Industrial Pharmacy in the University of Witwatersrand’s Department of Pharmacy and Pharmacology and the Director of the WADDP Research Unit, one of the flagship research units of Wits University. He is also currently Head of the Department of Pharmacy and Pharmacology and a South African National Research Foundation (NRF) Research Chair in Pharmaceutical Biomaterials and Polymer-Engineered Drug Delivery Technologies. He is an inventor of 43 pharmaceutical pharmaceutical product patents (28 granted internationally) aimed at improving the treatment of infectious diseases, oncology, neurotrauma and within special populations such as paediatrics as well as in women health. His patents disclose multipurpose product technologies that ensure affordability, availability and adaptable to the needs of communities.