Ernesta M. Meintjes

Ernesta Meintjes is the South African Research Chair in Brain Imaging and Professor of Biomedical Engineering in the Department of Human Biology at the University of Cape Town (UCT). Meintjes initiated the Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) research programme at UCT in 2001 and performed the first functional MRI studies in South Africa in 2004, which led to the establishment of the Cape Universities Brain Imaging Centre in 2007, with subsequent expansion to the Cape Universities Body Imaging Centre, of which she has been director since its inception in 2015. Her work has generated some of the most comprehensive neuroimaging studies in the world on brain development in children exposed to early-life insults.

Meintjes has authored/co-authored more than 100 peer-reviewed journal papers and more than 220 conference papers. She was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship in 2010, and was nominated by Women World Neuroscience (WWN) for the Rita Montalcini Scholarship in 2013. She has successfully mentored 10 postdoctoral fellows, supervised 23 PhD and 24 master's students, and currently supervises 10 PhD and 9 master's students.