Dr Abram Madiehe completed his PhD from Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge in 2000, and his postdoctoral training at the University of Georgia in Athens in 2002. He returned home in 2003 to join the South African Medical Research Council, where he established a research group to study the molecular biology of obesity development and its link to the development of chronic diseases, especially type 2 diabetes. As an extraordinary senior lecturer at the University of the Western Cape (UWC), he collaborated with the UWC Biotechnology Department on the proteomic analysis of serum from lean and obese rats. In 2007, he moved his research group to UWC, and effectively joined the DST/Mintek Nanotechnology Innovation Centre. During this stint with the NIC, he supervised postgraduate research on the development of gold nanoparticles as drug delivery agents for obesity treatment. He then left the MRC and joined CSIR in 2014 as a Research Group Leader for the development of diagnostics for tuberculosis and diabetes. In November 2016 he took up an Associate Professorship in the Department of Biotechnology at the University of the Western Cape, where he continues his research on the use of nanotechnology to develop drug delivery agents for obesity and cancer, as well as the synthesis of silver and gold nanoparticles using plant extracts with known anecdotal effects on the treatment of human ailments. He is currently the group leader of the NanoBiotechnology Research Group (NBRG), working closely with the NIC and the Nanomedicine Group at the School of Pharmacy.
