Lyndy McGaw is Associate Professor and Leader of the Phytomedicine Programme based at the Faculty of Veterinary Science, University of Pretoria. Her research focuses on investigation and development of effective and safe anthelmintic, acaricidal, anti-inflammatory and antimicrobial remedies for use in animal and human medicine, as well as alternatives to antimicrobial feed additives. Prof McGaw has published over 100 scientific papers and has contributed 14 book chapters. She serves on the editorial boards of Frontiers in Ethnopharmacology, South African Journal of Botany, BMC Complementary and Alternative Medicine, and Journal of Ethnopharmacology. She was listed as one of the top 31 cited African researchers in Pharmacology and Toxicology by Thomson Reuters in 2013, and was recently awarded “Researcher of the Year” at the Faculty of Veterinary Sciences, University of Pretoria.

Muna Ali Abdalla pursued PhD studies in Natural Products Chemistry in the group of Prof. Hartmut Laatsch at Georg-August University of Göttingen, Germany. From February 2013 to January 2016 she worked as Alexander von Humboldt (AvH) postdoctoral fellow at Institute of Chemistry, TU Berlin. From 2016 she was awarded a three-year contract as a Senior Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Pretoria, South Africa. She was appointed as a phytochemist involved in collaborative projects as well as supervision of PhD students. Dr Abdalla has published more than 30 papers in international peer-reviewed journals, discovered dozens of bioactive compounds such as abyssomicins, quinones, alkaloids, tetracyclopeptides and phenolic compounds from microorganisms as well as several plant-derived metabolites.