Irwin Brown is Head of Department and Professor of Information Systems (IS) at the University of Cape Town (UCT). He obtained a BScEngHons (Electrical) degree from University of Zimbabwe (1985-1988), a MInfSys (1994-1995) degree from Curtin University of Technology, Australia, and a PhD from UCT (2001-2005).  He maintains a broad interest in all areas of IS research, but with a specific focus on understanding and theorising IS phenomena in the contextual conditions of Africa. He has contributed to over 40 peer-reviewed journal articles, and more than 70 peer-reviewed conference papers. Notable outlets include the European Journal of Information Systems, and leading Association for Information Systems (AIS) conferences such as the International Conference on Information Systems and the European Conference on Information Systems. He has supervised to graduation 17 PhD candidates (12 as main supervisor). He serves several journals including as Editor-in-Chief for the African Journal of Information Systems (2021-present), and is currently a guest editor for the European Journal of Information Systems Special Issue on Advancing the Development of Contextually Relevant ICT4D Theories.

Dr. Josiah Chavula received a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Cape Town (UCT) in 2017,  a Masters degree in Networking and Internet Systems from Lancaster University (UK 2011), and a BSc in Computer Science and Physics from the University of Malawi in 2005 . For his PhD, and as part of the HPI Research School at UCT, Josiah looked at technical solutions to enhance Internet-based collaboration among universities in Africa. Prior to taking up an academic position at UCT, Josiah was a Senior Research Engineer at the African Network Information Centre (AFRINIC), the Regional Registry for Internet Number Resources serving the African Internet Community. Previously, Josiah worked as a Network Engineer in Malawi's telecommunications industry before joining Mzuzu University, where he taught undergraduate ICT courses and championed skills-based ICT training programs for local communities and entrepreneurs in Malawi. Josiah’s current research focuses on performance of internet systems in low resource contexts, and on enhancing the use of Networks and the Internet for innovative and sustainable solutions that help local communities.  

Melissa Densmore is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Computer Science at University of Cape Town and Acting Director of the UCT Centre in Information & Communications Technology for Development. Densmore’s research explores design with mothers and community-based digital content creation and collaborationin the context of community wireless networks (cloudlets). Prior work includes an ethnography of technology adoption in an NGO program in Uganda, a delay-tolerant tele-consultation system for doctors in Ghana and contributions to infrastructure enabling village health centers to consult with doctors at the Aravind Eye Hospitals. Recipient of the 2008 Yamashita Foundations for Change Prize, she has been doing ethnographic fieldwork, systems design, and deployments in Ghana, India, Mexico, Rwanda, and Uganda since 2004. Melissa completed her PhD at University of California, Berkeley in Information Management and Systems, has an MSc in Data Communications, Networks and Distributed Systems from University College London, and holds a BA in Computer Science from Cornell University.

I am a Lecturer in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Cape Town. My research area is Natural Language Processing and Machine Learning. My current research focusses on text generation, linguistic structure prediction, and low-resource language processing. Previously, I was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Washington, working with Yejin Choi. I completed my PhD at the University of Oxford, supervised by Phil Blunsom. Before that I obtained a Masters degree and undergraduate degrees in Computer Science at the University of Stellenbosch in South Africa.

Ulrike Rivett is a Professor in the Department of Information Systems in the School of IT at UCT. Her research focuses on understanding the impact of ICTs in resource constraint environments and is application and implementation driven to contribute to transformation and societal impact. A particular interest of her research group iCOMMS lies in the use of design methodologies to improve  the participation of the marginalised in research and development. She has worked on projects with the Gates Foundation, the World Bank, the German Academic Exchange program and the South African Water Research Commission. Her work has been published widely in the field of ICT for development and she has also received a number of awards for her work with communities and the innovative use of ICT applications. 

Professor Lisa Seymour, from the Department of Information Systems (IS) at the University of Cape Town, researches and teaches in the areas of business processes, enterprise systems and IS education; with particular emphasis on regional development in Southern Africa in line with the research group CITANDA (Centre for IT and National Development in Africa). Her research aims to assist organisations, particularly within the SME and public sector in Africa, obtaining benefit from their business processes and enterprise systems. She is also interested in solving educational challenges in this space and in working collaboratively on these challenges.

C. Maria Keet is a Senior Lecturer with the Department of Computer Science, University of Cape Town. She focuses on logic-based knowledge representation, ontology and Ontology, and conceptual data modelling, which has resulted in over 90 peer-reviewed publications, most of them as main author. She is PI on a NRF-funded (CPRR-grant) project on a grammar engine for Nguni languages, and was PI on an DST/MINCyT-funded bi-lateral project with Argentina on ontology-driven conceptual modelling and on a UKZN-funded project on crowdsourcing an isiZulu terminology. She was involved in several EU projects, coordinated the development of the WONDER system for intelligent access to biological data, and has served in over 25 Program Committees of international workshops and conferences and reviewed for 14 journals. She is a NRF-rated researcher (Y1).

Before her employment at UCT, Maria was Senior lecturer at the School of Computer Science, University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa and before that, a non-tenured Assistant Professor (ricercatore a tempo determinato) at the KRDB Research Centre, Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Italy. She obtained a PhD in Computer Science at the KRDB Research Centre in 2008, following a BSc(honours) 1st class in IT & Computing from the Open University UK in 2004, and 3.5 years work experience as systems engineer in the IT industry with its vocational training (MSCE, ASE, ITIL). In addition to computer science, she obtained an MSc in Food Science (Microbiology) from Wageningen University and Research Centre, the Netherlands, in 1998, and an MA 1st class in Peace & Development Studies from the University of Limerick, Ireland, in 2003.

Hussein Suleman is Head of Department and Associate Professor in Computer Science at the University of Cape Town. His research is situated within the Centre for ICT for Development (ICT4D) and the Digital Libraries Laboratory. Hussein's main research interests are in digital libraries, ICT4D, African language information retrieval, cultural heritage preservation, Internet technology and educational technology. He has in the past worked extensively on architecture and interoperability issues related to digital library systems, with a growing emphasis on the relationship between low resource conditions and such architectures. This has evolved into a focus on ICT for development (ICT4D); this is a new research area in computer science that looks into the application of ICT to solve key developmental problems, as defined locally or by multinational agencies like the United Nations.