Fellowship Winners

"As academic researchers, the science that we do has to matter. We have to see that what we are creating is of benefit, creating good science, but also having an impact on the broader community”.

Wits Health HUBB

As a young adult, Dr Lisa Ware painfully watched as her brother, who had just come into adulthood, went into a downward spiral after losing his job. Coming from a working class background, the family had limited information on what to do with the hopelessness that engulfed him.

With her training in nutrition and health psychology, her research has focused on the prevention of chronic disease. When she came to work in Soweto and heard the stories from youth of how unemployment created major barriers to a healthier life, the experience had a profound impact.

While taking part in the Wits Health Consortium Great Leap Forward (GLF) programme to foster entrepreneurial spirit in academics, Ware a Senior Researcher at the DSI-NRF Centre of Excellence in Human Development, with co-founders Lethu Kapueja and Dr Delan Naidoo approached the Development Bank of Southern Africa (DBSA). The proposal for a new type of health intervention in Soweto. One that employed youth that were not in employment, education or training (NEET), that provided financial support, health education (NQF3 Health Promotion), positioned youth as advocates for health, and located them within their communities as health agents for change. This innovative health-social-economic development project in Soweto called the Wits Health HUBB opened its virtual doors to NEET Sowetan youth in mid-2020 with support from GLF and DBSA.

Wits Cricket Research Hub

The Wits Health Consortium’s Great Leap Forward fellowship has awarded Benita Olivier R150 000 to be applied against her research project in the field of cricket fast bowling: “injury epidemiology and risk factors amongst school and club level cricket players”.

Benita Olivier (PhD) is a professor in the Physiotherapy Department, School of Therapeutic Sciences, who recently established the Wits Cricket Research Hub for Science, Medicine and Rehabilitation https://www.wits.ac.za/wcrh/. Benita was a fellow of the Wits Health Consortium’s Great Leap Forward programme which aims to capacitate academics to develop an entrepreneurial academic career.

A short and simple “thank you” would not have been enough to give credit to where the Great Leap Forward journey has done for its fellows. The coaching, mentoring, training and everything else which formed part of the fellowship over the last two years gave me direction. I still have a lot to learn and I’ll be on the lookout for a Great Leap Forward Advanced to guide me through the next 10 years.”

Wits Advanced Drug Delivery Platform (WADDP)

Prof. Pradeep Kumar (BPharm, MPharm, PhD) is currently an Associate Professor of Pharmaceutics at Wits’ Department of Pharmacy and Pharmacology, and Co-Director and Principal Researcher at the Wits Advanced Drug Delivery Platform (WADDP) Research Unit.

The WADDP is a world leading research entity established in 2007. It vibrates with a team of exceptionally passionate and responsive Pharmaceutical Scientists focused on researching and producing 21st century patient-centric pharmaceutical product innovations as neat solutions for the most challenging unmet therapeutic needs globally.

The WADDP is a formally recognised research entity at Wits University within the Faculty of Health Sciences consistently producing high quality research over two decades.

The WADDP provides the largest postgraduate and postdoctoral training and research platform in South Africa for candidates with a specific passion to undertake cutting-edge research in the pharmaceutical sciences.