2024 - 2026 Executive Committee

Prof. Gugu H. Mhlongo obtained her B.Sc degree (Physics and Electronics) in 2004, BSc. Hon. and MSc. (Physics) in 2006 and 2008, respectively, from the University of Zululand; and PhD (Physics) in 2011 from the University of the Free State where she is an affiliated Associate Professor. At present, Prof. Gugu Mhlongo is employed as a principal researcher appointed as an acting research group leader for gas sensor group and a project leader for gas nanosensors for food safety platform. Before she resumed this role, from 2017 to 2019 she was the characterization facility manager at CeNAM. The Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) permanently retained her upon completing her doctorate. There she has conducted excellent work on novel functionalized nanostructured materials as nanosensor development. She has strong interests in development and fabrication of novel functionalized nanostructured materials as active nanosensor layers for food safety and indoor and outdoor air quality monitoring and control, in which she has huge expertise. Prof. Mhlongo has been hosted as a visiting researcher at various institutes including NIMS in Japan, Kagoshima University in Japan, Polish Academy of Science in Poland, Institute Foundation for Research and Technology - Hellas in Greece and Catolonia Institute for Energy Research (IREC) in Spain. She was appointed as part of South African delegation to BRICS Solid State Lighting (SSL) Joint Collaboration Working Group engagements in China between 2014-2017. She is currently part of South Africa leadership team on Materials Science and Nanotechnology BRICS working group and appointed as the research project coordinator considering her experience in field of gas sensors for agriculture and food safety. She has published more than 50 papers and 5 conference proceedings (as a first, corresponding and co-author), co-authored 2 book chapters. She has presented some of her research work as a guest, invited, keynote and plenary speaker in more than 20 local and international conferences. she has supervised five MSc and two PhD degrees to completion, five PhDs are currently in progress scheduled to complete in 2023. She served in several editorial boards as an editorial board committee member such as CSIR Emerging Researcher Symposium, Executive member: South African Institute of Physics(SAIP): 2018-2022, additional member of ISO TC229_NANOTECHNOLOGIES in SA_2016-2019. Currently, she is serving as an executive member of the South African Institute of Nanotechnology (SANi): 2018 to date, reviewer editor on the editorial board of Electrochemical Sensors_ Specialty section of Frontiers in Sensors, and guest editor for Processes Journal: Special Issue.