Gerda Fouche

University of Pretoria

Dr. Gerda Fouche is an extraordinary lecturer in the Department of Chemistry within the Faculty of Natural and Agricultural Sciences at the University of Pretoria. She earned her doctorate from the University of South Africa in 1991, with a thesis titled “Exploratory Organic Chemistry and Synthetic Methodology.” Since 2018, she has been involved in supervising postgraduate research projects for students in both the Department of Chemistry and the Paraclinical Sciences Department of Veterinary Science. Dr. Fouche has served as the scientific innovation leader for the Natural Product Group at CSIR Biosciences. From 1998 to 2017, she conducted research at the CSIR, mentoring and supervising postgraduate students in the study of medicinal and indigenous plants of southern Africa. Her research projects aimed at discovering and developing drugs and natural product leads from South Africa's biodiversity, focusing on the purification, isolation, and structural elucidation of active compounds from these medicinal plants. She holds six granted international patents in natural product chemistry and has published more than 70 peer-reviewed articles in international journals. Additionally, she co-authored the book “South African Pharmacopoeia of Medicinal Plants,” published in 2022, which compiles information on the twenty-five most significant medicinal plants in South Africa. Over the past five years, she has served as managing editor for both the Journal of Ethnopharmacology and the Journal of Herbal Medicine.