/ 15 August 2016

Professor Jane Catherine Ngila: Specialist in nanotechnology for water treatment

Professor Jane Catherine Ngila
Professor Jane Catherine Ngila

Professor Jane Ngila received a B.Ed degree in science in 1986 and an MSc in chemistry in 1992 from Kenyatta University in Kenya. She obtained a PhD in chemistry in 1995 from the University of New South Wales, Australia, sponsored by the Equity and Merit Scholarships Scheme, under the Australian International Development Assistance Bureau.

Appointed a tutorial fellow in 1989, Ngila was promoted to a lecturer in 1996 at Kenyatta University. She worked at the University of Botswana from 1998 to 2006, first as a lecturer and then as a senior lecturer. She was appointed as a senior lecturer at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in 2006 and then joined the University of Johannesburg (UJ) as a full professor of analytical/environmental chemistry in 2011. She was appointed deputy head of department in charge of research in 2012 and then head of the applied chemistry department at UJ from April 2013 to June 2016. She is currently on sabbatical leave until September 2016 to focus on research activities and postgraduate student supervision.

Ngila’s current research work focuses on nanotechnology for water treatment, water quality monitoring (including speciation analysis), and the development of analytical methods for detecting substances in various environmental matrices. She has successfully supervised 17 doctoral, 22 master’s and 21 honours students, and has mentored 13 postdoctoral fellows. She is currently supervising 18 PhD and five master’s students, and is mentoring three postdoctoral fellows.

She has authored and co-authored over 130 peer-reviewed journal articles, books and book chapters. She has presented more than 120 conference papers in various countries, has an NRF C2 rating, with a Google Scholar h-index of 14 and a Scopus index of 13, with 671 citations. She reviews articles in international journals such as Water Research, Water South Africa, Nanotechnology, Talanta, Analytical Letters, Journal of Hazardous Materials, Desalination and Water Purification, South Africa Journal of Chemistry, Journal of Physics and Chemistry of the Earth, Journal of Toxicology and Environmental Chemistry, Environmental Monitoring and Assessment andElectrochimica Acta.

Ngila is a member of the South African Chemical Institute and the Kenya Chemical Society, and previously belonged to the American Chemical Society, the Royal Society of Chemistry, and the Royal Australian Chemical Institute. She is also a member of the advisory boards for Water South Africa, African Utility Week (Clean Power and Water), the International Conference on Pure and Applied Chemistry, and is the UJ representative in the WaterNet/WARFSA/GWP-SA Committee.

In January 2016, she was nominated an honorary member of the advisory board for the Jarislowsky Chair in Water and Global Healthat Carleton University in Canada. She is a member of the reference group for South African Water Research Commission projects.

Ngila is an adjudicator for the L’Oréal-UNESCO Awards for Women in Science Sub-Saharan Africa programme for doctoral students and postdoctoral fellows in natural sciences. She is also a member of the African Network of Scientific and Technological Institutions and the African Regional Conference of Vice Chancellors and Deans of Science Engineering and Technology.