Zeblon Vilakazi

Zeblon Zenzele Vilakazi (born 3 April 1969) has been Vice Chancellor of the Wits University in Johannesburg, South Africa since 1 January 2021.^[1] Professor Vilakazi is a nuclear physicist.^[2][3] He speaks French, German, Zulu, Siswati, Sesotho, Afrikaans and English.^{[citation needed]} Prior to his promotion, he was Vice-Principal and Deputy Vice-Chancellor for Research and Postgraduate Studies.

Early life[]

Vilakazi was born in Katlehong, Ekurhuleni, as the youngest of a family of eight.^[4] His mother was a housewife, and his father ran a small shop in the community.^[5] He was one of the first students from Africa to conduct PhD research at the European Centre for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva, Switzerland. This was followed by a National Research Foundation postdoctoral fellowship at CERN.

Career[]

After conducting his doctoral research at the European Centre for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva, Switzerland, he returned to South Africa and became a lecturer at the University of Cape Town, where he was instrumental in establishing South Africa’s first experimental high-energy physics research group focusing on the development of the High-level Trigger for the CERN-ALICE experiment at the Large Hadron Collider. In 2014 he joined the University of the Witwatersrand in January 2014 as the Deputy Vice-Chancellor: Research and Postgraduate Affairs and was promoted to the position of Vice-Principal in April 2020. He is a Fellow of the African Academy of Sciences.

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