Fulufhelo Nelwamondo

Fulufhelo V. Nelwamondo (OMS) is an electrical engineer by training, and holds a Bachelor of Science and a PhD in Electrical Engineering, in the area of Computational Intelligence, both from the University of the Witwatersrand, in South Africa. He matriculated at Mbilwi Secondary School and his PhD was supervised by Tshilidzi Marwala. In 2017, the President of South Africa, bestowed the Order of Mapungubwe (highest honors that a country, through its President, bestows on its citizens) in Silver, to Professor Nelwamondo, in line with the powers vested in the President of the Republic, in terms of Section 84 of the Constitution of South Africa. Nelwamondo is a registered Professional Engineer, and is the Executive Director: Council for Scientific and Industrial Research Modelling and Digital Science. He is a senior member of the IEEE, and a visiting professor of Electrical Engineering at the University of Johannesburg. He was a post-doctoral fellow at the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, of Harvard University. Nelwamondo has research and practical experience in software engineering and in computational intelligence in various applications. He is the youngest South African ever to receive the Harvard-South Africa fellowship and has been awarded many national and international research accolades, from organizations such as the IEEE, South African Institute of Electrical Engineers, amongst others. In 2009/10, he was awarded the National Science and Technology Forum award, for outstanding research, and in 2016, he was awarded the Operation Research Society of South Africa (ORSSA) Award for "outstanding contribution to the Science and Profession of Operation Research over a considerable period of time". He has interests in exciting and emerging areas of software and technology applications including Biometrics based system, data mining, data science, modelling of complex systems, machine learning and mechanism design. Nelwamondo has successfully supervised a number of Masters and PhD degrees in electrical engineering, and continues to do so. He has published over 100 research papers in journals, reviewed conferences and book chapters.

Fulufhelo Nelwamondo is a founding member of the South African Young Academy of Science and currently serves on the Department of Home Affairs ministerial advisory committee on modernisation. He has served on several committees including the Research Expert Forum of the National Department of Tourism, and currently serves on the board of the Metropolitan Trading Company SOC Ltd.

He is a fellow of the South African Young Academy of Science. He has been featured in many forums including the advertising of cereal on South African Television. Nelwamondo has been ranked Mail and Guardian newspaper as the top 200 young South Africans.