After completing her National Diploma in Medical Technology, Tandi Matsha joined the Department of Chemical Pathology at the Faculty of Medicine of Walter Sisulu University (WSU) in 1996.  This was a major step towards fulfilling a dream of working in academia and gave her the opportunity to obtain a PhD degree in 2004 from the University of Cape Town, South Africa. Currently, Tandi is a tenured professor and DST-NRF-Nedbank SARChI Chair of Cardiometabolic Health Research Unit, Department of Biomedical Sciences, Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT). She joined CPUT in 2007 where she developed and grew a research group that has been at the forefront of efforts to characterise the burden of cardio-metabolic diseases in mixed ancestry South Africans. Since the establishment of this research group in 2008, 8 doctoral, and 16 masters’ students have been supervised to completion. Tandi is passionate about research that is cost effective and relevant to the needs of the community, conducted by “Africans in Africa”. Tandi’s unit published the first investigations on the epigenetics of diabetes in Africans and these studies have pioneered the current appreciation for the importance of population specific epigenetic markers in Africans. Through her numerous peer reviewed publications and contributions at national and international congresses, she has received wide recognition as a champion of diabetes and epigenetics research in Africa.  She was evaluated by the National Research Foundation and was awarded a C 1 rating which is given to established researchers.

Apart from her keen interest in academic research, she enjoys gardening, reading, shopping, being a “good wife and mother”.

Unit Director: Prof Tandi Matsha
Department of Biomedical Sciences, Symphony Way, Cape Peninsula University of Technology, Bellville, 7530
Work: 0219596603
Mobile: 0716773433
Email: matshat@cput.ac.za