Sakkie Pretorius

Professor Pretorius began his career in South Africa. At Stellenbosch University he was appointed Professor of Microbiology, then became the founding Director of the Institute for Wine Biotechnology. In the US and Europe, he conducted research into molecular yeast genetics. He relocated to Adelaide with his family to become the Managing Director and CEO at the Australian Wine Research Institute Ltd. He was also appointed Affiliate Professor, School of Agriculture, Food and Wine, University of Adelaide, then Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Vice-President: Research and Innovation, University of South Australia — a position he held until 2013 when he took up his role as Deputy Vice-Chancellor Research at Macquarie University.

His commitment to research excellence drove the creation of the Strategic Research Framework World-leading research, World-changing impact, shaping Macquarie University’s research priorities for the next decade. As a synthetic biologist, he leads the Australian node of the international Synthetic Yeast Genome (Yeast 2.0) project and represents Australia on the International Advisory Board of the Genome Project Write (GP-write) initiative.