Zeblon Vilakazi

Zeblon Zenzele Vilakazi
Vice-Chancellor and Principal of University of the Witwatersrand
In office 1 January 2021 – present
Chancellor	Judy Dlamini
Preceded by	Adam Habib
Personal details
Born	(1969-04-03) 3 April 1969 Katlehong, Ekurhuleni, Gauteng, South Africa
Spouse	Mary Vilakazi
Alma mater	European Centre for Nuclear Research (PhD)
Profession	Physicist University administrator
Scientific career
Institutions	University of Cape Town iThemba LABS University of Witwatersrand

Zeblon Zenzele Vilakazi FRS (born 3 April 1969) has been Vice Chancellor of the Wits University in Johannesburg, South Africa since 1 January 2021. Professor Vilakazi is a nuclear physicist. Prior to his promotion, he was Vice-Principal and Deputy Vice-Chancellor for Research and Postgraduate Studies. He speaks French, German, Russian, Xhosa, Zulu, Siswati (Mother tongue), Sesotho, Afrikaans and English.

Early life

Vilakazi was born in Katlehong, Ekurhuleni, as the youngest of a family of eight. His mother was a housewife, and his father ran a small shop in the community. He was one of the first students from Africa to conduct PhD research at the European Centre for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva, Switzerland. This was followed by a National Research Foundation postdoctoral fellowship at CERN.

Career

After conducting his doctoral research at the European Centre for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva, Switzerland, he returned to South Africa and became a lecturer at the University of Cape Town, where he was instrumental in establishing South Africa’s first experimental high-energy physics research group focusing on the development of the High-level Trigger for the CERN-ALICE experiment at the Large Hadron Collider. He joined the University of the Witwatersrand in January 2014 as the Deputy Vice-Chancellor: Research and Postgraduate Affairs and was promoted to the position of Vice-Principal in April 2020. He is a Fellow of the African Academy of Sciences. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in May 2022.