Kelly Chibale is a full Professor of Organic Chemistry at the University of Cape Town (UCT) where he holds the Neville Isdell Chair in African-centric Drug Discovery & Development. He is also a Schmidt Sciences AI2050 Senior Fellow, Full Member of the UCT Institute of Infectious Disease & Molecular Medicine, founding Director of the South African Medical Research Council Drug Discovery & Development Research unit at UCT, Founder & Director of the UCT Holistic Drug Discovery and Development (H3D) Centre, and Founder & CEO of the H3D Foundation.
Kelly obtained his PhD in Synthetic Organic Chemistry from the University of Cambridge (UK) with Stuart Warren. This was followed by postdoctoral stints at the University of Liverpool (UK) with Nick Greeves and at The Scripps Research Institute (USA) with K.C. Nicolaou. He was a Sandler Sabbatical Fellow at the University of California San Francisco (USA), a US Fulbright Senior Research Scholar at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine (USA), and a Visiting Professor at Pfizer (UK).
Kelly has received many notable awards and honors, which include a 2010/11 National Science and Technology Forum-BHP Billiton Award in the category TW Kambule NRF Senior Black Researcher (2011), UCT Alan Pifer Research Award (2011), South African National Research Foundation (NRF) Special Recognition Award: Champion of Research Capacity Development at South African Higher Education Institutions (2012); South African Medical Research Council Gold Medal (2016); Cheney Visiting Fellowship from the University of Leeds in the UK (2017-2018); South African Chemical Institute Gold Medal (2018); Royal Society (UK) Africa Prize (2023), Schmidt Sciences AI2050 Senior Fellowship (2023), Honorary Doctorate from the University of Basel, Switzerland (2023), International Member of the United States National Academy of Medicine (2024), Honorary Fellowship of Queens’ College at the University of Cambridge (2024), and Honorary Doctorate of Leiden University , Netherlands (2025). Kelly was also named one of Fortune magazine’s World's 50 Greatest Leaders (2018), one of 22 black biotech leaders in honour of Juneteenth in the USA on a list published by the Timmerman Report, which celebrates innovative black leaders who are change-makers in their respective fields (2021), and one of the 25 standout voices in African public health by Harvard University’s Public Health magazine (2022). After serving as an Associate Editor for the American Chemical Society (ACS)’s Journal of Medicinal Chemistry, in 2023 Kelly became the first Editor-In-Chief (EIC) from Africa of an ACS publication when he was appointed EIC of ACS Medicinal Chemistry Letters. Kelly’s other roles include being member of the board of Chemical Process Technologies (CPT) Pharma (South Africa), Chair of Global Health for LifeArc (UK), member of the International Human Frontier Science Program Organization Council of Scientists representing South Africa, Member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the INTREPID Alliance -a non-profit consortium of innovative biopharmaceutical companies dedicated to accelerating the pipeline of antiviral treatments to help protect the world ahead of future pandemics, and member of the Scientific Advisory Boards of the Helmholtz Institute for Pharmaceutical Research Saarland (Germany) and Global Health Drug Discovery Institute (China). Kelly also serves on editorial advisory boards of ACS Infectious Diseases, Accounts of Chemical Research, ACS Bio & Med Chem Au, Angewandte Chemie International Edition, Cell, ACS Pharmacology & Translational Science and Journal of the American Chemical Society.
Kelly’s research interests are in drug discovery and the development of tools and models to contribute to improving treatment outcomes in people of African descent.