Marietjie Venter

Marietjie Van Aardt Venter or simply Marietjie Venter, is a South African virologist and researcher. She serves as a distinguished professor and research chair in Emerging Viral Threats & One Health (EViTOH) in the Infectious Disease and Oncology Research Institute (IDORI) at the University of the Witwatersrand. Since 2021, she has chaired the SAGO, a WHO permanent advisory body on the origins of emerging infectious diseases including COVID-19. Prior to this, Venter has been serving in the Department of Medical Virology at the University of Pretoria since 2005, leading the Zoonotic Arbo & Respiratory Viruses research program and co-founding the Centre for Viral Zoonoses and is the Director for the Centre for Emerging arbo and respiratory virus research (CEARV) in an extraordinary Professor position at University of Pretoria.

Between 2009 and 2014, Venter served as co-director of the Centre for Respiratory Diseases and Meningitis at NICD and from 2014-2016 One Health Programme director, for the Global Disease Detection Centre, of the US-CDC in South Africa. In 2013, she won the NSTF award for the best output by a senior scientist within the previous 5 to 10 years in South Africa. Since 2020, she has been the vice president of the World Society for Virology responsible for Africa, and the president-elect of the organization since 2024. Provided by Wikipedia