Associate Professor Pradeep Kumar (BPharm, MPharm, PhD) is currently an Associate Professor of Pharmaceutics at the University of the Witwatersrand, Department of Pharmacy and Pharmacology. Associate Prof Kumar has an experience of over 10 years in academic teaching and research with pharmaceutics as the core subject along with biomaterial design, tissue engineering, and nanomedicine. His PhD thesis was focused on the design and development of Polymer-Engineered Neural Devices for potential application in reducing neurological deficits after spinal cord injuries and was awarded the University of the Witwatersrand Faculty of Health Sciences’ Most Prestigious PhD Degree Award. In addition, he is interested in the in silico mathematical analysis and programming for performance interpretation of drug eluting assemblies and polymer architectures. He holds a Y1 rating from the National Research Foundation (NRF).
Associate Prof Kumar is a recipient of several prestigious awards including ALBA-FKNE-YIBRO diversity grant (2020), Global Young Academy Membership (2020), INGSA-Africa Science Advice diploma (2020), University of the Witwatersrand’ Friedel Sellschop Research Award (2019), South African Young Academy of Science (SAYAS) Membership (2018), ASRT (Egypt) Young African Researcher Award 2018 (Category: Health and Pharmaceutical Sciences), Mail & Guardian’s Top 200 Young South Africans 2018 (Category: Science and Technology), Golden Key International Honours Society Membership (2018), Claude Leon Foundation Merit Award (2018), African-German Network of Excellence in Science (AGNES) Junior Researcher Grant (2018) funded by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and the German Ministry of Education and Research, Society of Pharmaceutical Education and Research’s Young Scientist Award at PST 2018, University of the Witwatersrand Innovators Forum’s First-time (2013), Prolific (2014) and International (2016) Inventor Awards, International Society of Developmental Neuroscience Scholarship (2012), and Elsevier’s NanoToday PhD student Award (2011). Three of his publications have won the best pharmaceutics paper award at Pharmaceutical Society of South Africa (PSSA) conference (2013, 2014, and 2015) and eight of his presentations have won best oral/poster presentation including three young researcher awards. He was a recipient of the prestigious Prime Minister’s Scholarship (Ministry of Defence, Govt. of India) and an All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE)(India) fellowship during his MPharm.
Associate Prof Kumar’s research findings have been published as over 240 ISI publications (H-index: 35), 4 editorials, 3 edited books, and 37 book chapters in the area of biomaterials, pharmaceutics, and molecular modelling. He has proudly presented his research across the globe (United States of America, France, Spain, Australia, Denmark, Canada, Thailand, Russia, and India). To date he has supervised/co-supervised 12 PhD students to graduation/completion and currently busy with 13 doctoral projects. Associate Prof Kumar is an inventor on 14 granted patents. His research has been funded by National Research Foundation (NRF), South African Medical Research Council (SAMRC), Technology Innovation Agency, Claude Leon Foundation, University of the Witwatersrand’ FRC and URC. Associate Prof Kumar is on expert reviewer panel of various national and international funding agencies such as National Research Foundation (Singapore), Claude Leon Foundation, European and Developing Countries Clinical Trials Partnership (EDCTP), Agence Nationale de la Recherche (France), Euregio Science Fund, and the National Research Foundation (South Africa). He is on the reviewer panel of over 90 scientific journals with over 600 reviews. For his reviewer contributions, Associate Prof Kumar was placed among Top Reviewers in 4 categories (Publons Global Peer Review Awards 2018 and 2019), is recognized as an Excellent Reviewer on Publons. He is an Assoc Editor of the journal 3 BioTech.
Associate Prof Kumar, a registered pharmacist in India and South Africa, is a member of several prestigious societies such as Catholic Relief Services (CRS), ISN, Federation of European Neuroscience Societies (FENS), Erasmus Student Network (ESN), South African Young Academy of Science (SAYAS), Royal Society of South Africa (RSSAf), South African Sports Coaching Association (SASCA), TERMIS, ISID, European Peptide Society (EPS), International Chemical Biology Society and the Society for the Advancement of Science in Africa (SASA).
