Professor Jan-Hendrik (Jannie) Hofmeyr is an Emeritus Professor of Biochemistry at Stellenbosch University, where he has been a member of the Biochemistry Department since 1975. His research of the past four decades has been in the field of computational systems biology where his main focus has been the understanding of regulatory design of metabolism. He obtained his PhD in 1986 at Stellenbosch University after collaborating with Henrik Kacser and the enzymologist Athel Cornish-Bowden. In the late 90s Jannie and his colleagues Jacky Snoep and Johann Rohwer formed the Triple-J Group for Molecular Cell Physiology in the Department of Biochemistry; this research group studies the control and regulation of cellular processes using theoretical, computer modelling and experimental approaches. He has made numerous fundamental contributions to the development of metabolic control analysis and computational systems biology, and with Athel Cornish-Bowden developed both co-response analysis and supply-demand analysis as a basis for understanding metabolic regulation. A more recent interest is to seek a way of expressing formally the functional organisation of the cell in terms of a theory of molecular fabrication. Here he has made contributions to Relational Biology, a field established by the theoretical biologist Robert Rosen. This interest has led him to a broader study of complex systems, which he pursued with the late philosopher of complexity Paul Cilliers, and which eventually led to the establishment of the Centre for Complex Systems in Transition at Stellenbosch University (now the Centre for Sustainability Transitions), of which he was a co-director. He is presently part of a collaboration that is developing Code Biology, a new research field that studies life and it evolution through the lens of organic codes. Prof Hofmeyr is a Fellow and former President of the Royal Society of South Africa and also a member of the Academy of Science of South Africa. He is a founder member and former Vice President of the International Society for Code Biology, and a member of the Committee of the International Study Group for Systems Biology. He also was the National Chair of the Arthritis Foundation of South Africa. Since its inception he has been involved in the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study (STIAS) as member of the Research Programme and Fellowship Committee. From 2000 to 2015 he maintained a National Research Foundation A-rating. He received the Stellenbosch University Vice-Chancellors award for outstanding research in 1999. He was awarded the prestigious Harry Oppenheimer Fellowship Award for 2002, the Beckman Gold Medal of the South African Biochemical Society in 2003, and in 2009 the Havenga Prize for Biological Sciences from the Suid-Afrikaanse Akademie vir Wetenskap en Kuns (South African Academy for Science and Art). In 2014-15 he took up a 10-month Fellowship of the Berlin Institute of Advanced Study. He received the University of Stellenbosch Chancellor's Award in 2018.
