Kelly Chibale Royal Australian Chemical Institute National Congress 2026

Kelly Chibale

Kelly Chibale is a Professor of Organic Chemistry at the University of Cape Town (UCT) where he holds the Neville Isdell Chair in African-centric Drug Discovery & Development. He is also a Schmidt Sciences AI2050 Senior Fellow, Full Member of the UCT Institute of Infectious Disease & Molecular Medicine, founding Director of the South African Medical Research Council Drug Discovery & Development Research unit at UCT, and Founder & Director of the UCT Holistic Drug Discovery and Development (H3D) Centre and Founder and CEO of the H3D Foundation. Kelly obtained his PhD in Synthetic Organic Chemistry from the University of Cambridge. This was followed by postdoctoral stints at the University of Liverpool and Scripps Research Institute. Kelly’s research interests are in infectious disease drug discovery and the development of technologies to contribute to improving treatment outcomes in people of African descent. He serves as Editor-In-Chief of the American Chemical Society (ACS)’s ACS Medicinal Chemistry Letters.