Cow­an

Don Cow­an was edu­cated (BSc, MSc, PhD) at the Uni­ver­sity of Waikato (New Zea­l­and) and com­pleted a 4‑year peri­od of postdoc­tor­al research in extremo­phile enzymo­logy before tak­ing a Lec­ture­ship at Uni­ver­sity Col­lege Lon­don (UK) in 1985. In 2001 he was appoin­ted to the Chair of Micro­bi­o­logy and Head of the Depart­ment of Bio­tech­no­logy at the Uni­ver­sity of the West­ern Cape (RSA), where he estab­lished the Insti­tute for Micro­bi­al Eco­logy and Meta­ge­n­om­ics. In 2012 he moved to the Uni­ver­sity of Pre­tor­ia where he is cur­rently the Dir­ect­or of both the Gen­om­ics Research Insti­tute and the Centre for Micro­bi­al Eco­logy and Genomics.

Don also holds the posts of Pro­fess­or Emer­it­us at the Uni­ver­sity of the West­ern Cape, was elec­ted as a Fel­low of the Roy­al Soci­ety of South Africa in 2007, as a Mem­ber of the Academy of Sci­ences of South Africa in 2008, and as an Hon­or­ary Fel­low of the Roy­al Soci­ety of New Zea­l­and in 2009. He was awar­ded the Uni­ver­sity of the West­ern Cape Vice-Rect­or’s Award for Research Excel­lence in 2008 and the South Afric­an Soci­ety for Micro­bi­o­logy Medal for Research Excel­lence in 2009. He is a past Pres­id­ent of the Roy­al Soci­ety of South Africa. He received the Nation­al Sci­ence and Tech­no­logy For­um Capa­city Devel­op­ment award in 2014. In April 2015 he received the Uni­ver­sity of Pretoria’s highest research award, the Chancellor’s Medal. He was elec­ted as a Fel­low of Afric­an Academy of Sci­ences in March 2017. More recently, he was awar­ded an NRF A1 rat­ing, the 2019 Roy­al Soci­ety of South Africa’s John F.W. Her­schel medal, the Uni­ver­sity of Pretoria’s 2020 Excep­tion­al Supervisor’s Award and the SAS­BMB 2021 Gold Medal.