Tshilidzi Marwala
South African academic administrator
Tshilidzi Marwala (born 28 July 1971) is a South African artificial intelligence engineer, a computer scientist, a mechanical engineer and a university administrator. He is currently Rector of the United Nations University and UN Under-Secretary-General. In August 2023 Marwala was appointed to the United Nations scientific advisory council.
Early life and education
Marwala was born on 28 July 1971 in Duthuni Village in the Limpopo Province. He obtained a Bachelor of Science in mechanical engineering from Case Western Reserve University, graduating Magna Cum Laude, followed by a PhD in artificial intelligence from St John's College, Cambridge in 2000.
Career
From 2000 to 2001, Marwala was a post-doctoral research associate at Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine. In 2003, he joined the University of the Witwatersrand and became a professor of electrical engineering in 2008. From 2013 to 2017, he was the deputy vice chancellor for research and internationalization as well as the dean of engineering at the University of Johannesburg.
From 2018 to 2023, Marwala was the vice-chancellor and principal of the University of Johannesburg. As Vice-Chancellor of the University of Johannesburg, Marwala developed and implemented the fourth industrial revolution (4IR) strategy, by introducing a compulsory artificial intelligence course and an Africa Insights course for all students, irrespective of their majors.
The public source identifies “Tshilidzi Marwala” as south African academic administrator. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Tshilidzi, Marwala and South.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 29, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7849622. VIAF identifies the subject as 6459149068376565730001. The Library of Congress control number is n2008064931. 1 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1971, 2023, 2000 and 2001.
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This entry incorporates text from “Tshilidzi Marwala” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.