Pan Africa Chemistry Network Congress 2019: Riches of the natural world: sustainable use of Africa’s natural products and materials (PACN2019)

Yonas Chebude received his PhD from the University of Wuppertal, Germany in 1999 and was a Research Assistant at the University of Wuppertal in the group of Prof. Hans Buerger. In 2000, he joined the Chemistry Department, Addis Ababa University as Assistant Professor, was promoted to Associate Professor in 2007. He was Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Programs, Faculty of Science, AAU (2005-2007). He was also the Chair of the Chemistry Department, AAU (January 2010-October 2010), and Dean of the Faculty of Chemical and Physical Sciences, College of Natural Sciences Addis Ababa University (February 2010-April 2012).
He is advisory board member, Green Chemistry, RSC, UK, has served as Advisory Board member and Vice Chair of the International Sustainable Chemistry Collaborative Centre (ISC3) ( 2015-2017), President of the Chemical Society of Ethiopia ( 2009-2013) . He is currently serving as Board member of the Federation of African Societies of Chemistry (FASC) and as the Chair of the Pan Africa Chemistry Network (PACN), Ethiopia -Hub. He is also an IUPAC Fellow.

Graham Jewitt joined IHE Delft Institute for Water Education as Professor of Hydrology in 2019. Prior to this he was Director of the Centre for Water Resources Research and Umgeni Water Chair of Water Resources Research at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa. Over the past twenty years, he has led several water and earth system science related initiatives, both in South Africa and abroad, with the relationship between land and water an overarching research thrust. He is on the editorial board of the journals, Hydrology and Earth System Sciences (HESS) and WaterSA, is a member of the management board of Waternet and is active in several other national and international fora. Recent work has been focused on the effective use of science to better inform land and water resources policy development, especially in developing countries, and developing tools to support the effective implementation of these. The nexus between Water, Food and Energy and valuation of water resources with a focus on Nature Based Solutions are current research foci. He has authored or co-authored over 70 journal articles and supervised numerous PhD and MSc students from different parts of the world.

Prof. Jacob O Midiwo undertook his PhD studies in Organic Chemistry at the University of Maryland, College Park, USA studying fungal mycotoxins which had potential in cancer chemotherapy. He graduated from that University in 1981 and took up lectureship position at his alma mater, University of Nairobi where he has risen through the ranks to full professorship.
Prof. Midiwo has done research on the secondary metabolites of popular Kenyan medicinal plants from a range of plant families: Myrsinaceae, Polygonaceae, Papilionacea, Compositae, Rutaceae and Sapindaceae.
 
He has published over 60 papers in refereed international journals describing the structures and bioactivity of compounds with various bioassay models- anti-plasmodial, anti-microbiol, mosquito larvicidal, insect anti-feedant effects and their capacity as anti-oxidants - in search of their potential application. 
Prof. Midiwo was the executive secretary of the Natural Products Research for East and Central Africa, NAPRECA, for nine years from 2004-2013. He is a fellow of the following scientific societies, Royal Society of Chemistry, the African Academy of Sciences and the Kenya National Academy of Sciences.   

Professor Ponnadurai Ramasami (of Mauritius), FRSC CSci CChem, leads the computational chemistry group at the Department of Chemistry of the University of Mauritius. His areas of expertise are on the use of computational methods to solve chemistry and interdisciplinary problems. 

Professor Abiy Yenesew has an extensive experience in teaching of Organic Chemistry, and conducting research in the field of Natural Products Chemistry at Addis Ababa University and the University of Nairobi. His research interest is on investigation of Eastern African plants for bioactive natural products, especially towards the treatment of infectious diseases such as malaria. He has co-authored over 90 articles in peer reviewed journals, and published three books on medicinal plants of East Africa. He has served as reviewer for several journals in the area of medicinal plants and natural product research. He is a subject editor of Phytochemistry Letters and also Editorial Board Member of the Journal of Natural Products and Journal of Ethnopharmacology. He has established wide collaborative partnership and have supervised seventeen PhD and thirty five MSc students; currently I am supervising five PhD and five MSc students. He has served as the Programme Officer and later as the Assistant Secretary of the Natural Product Research Network for Eastern and Central Africa (NAPRECA). He is a Fellow of the African Academy of Science and a member of professional societies including the Royal Society of Chemistry, the Chemical Society of Kenya.