Biography
Valerie Mizrahi is the director of the Institute of Infectious Disease and Molecular Medicine and a professor at the University of Cape Town (UCT). She directs the MRC/NHLS/UCT Molecular Mycobacteriology Research Unit, and heads the UCT node of the DST/NRF Centre of Excellence for Biomedical TB Research. She was an International Research Scholar of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) from 2000-2010, and in 2012, was selected as a Senior International Research Scholar of the HHMI.
Valerie received her PhD in Chemistry from the University of Cape Town in 1983. She completed a postdoctoral fellowship in mechanistic enzymology under Dr. Stephen Benkovic at the Pennsylvania State University before returning to South Africa in 1989 to establish a research unit at the South African Institute for Medical Research and the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, where she remained until 2010. Her research focuses on studying aspects of the physiology and metabolism of Mycobacterium tuberculosis of relevance to TB drug resistance, drug efficacy and drug discovery. She has published more than 100 papers in the fields of organic chemistry, biochemistry and molecular mycobacteriology. She is an active participant in the global tuberculosis research community and an advocate for research in this field. In 2007, Valerie received the Order of the Mapungubwe (Silver) in recognition of her contributions to biochemistry, molecular biology and tuberculosis in South Africa. Her other awards include the 2000 Unesco-L’Oreal For Women in Science Award (African and Middle East Region), the Gold and Silver Medals of the South African Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and the President’s Award from the South African National Research Foundation.
Valerie is an Associate Fellow of the Academy of Sciences of the Developing World, a Fellow of the Royal Society of South Africa and a Member of the Academy of Science of South Africa. In 2009, she was elected into Fellowship of the American Academy of Microbiology. She has served on the Board of Directors of the KwaZulu Natal Research Institute for TB and HIV (K-RITH) and currently serves on the Scientific Advisory Boards of K-RITH, the Global Alliance for TB Drug Development (New York), the ICGEB (Trieste), and the South African Centre for Epidemiological Modelling and Analysis (Stellenbosch University).