Dr Dr Sibongile Pefile, PhD
Managing Director, Smart Innovation

Prior to her appointment in 2005 as CSIR Group Manager for R&D Outcomes, Dr Dr Sibongile Pefile was the CSIR Intellectual Property and Innovation Manager. With an academic background in Pharmacy, which includes an MSc in Pharmaceutics in the area of transdermal drug delivery and a PhD in Pharmacology in the areas of organic chemistry and microbiology, Dr Pefile moved into the field of Intellectual Property when she became Programme Director at the Centre for the Management of Intellectual Property in Health Research and Development (MIHR). This job entailed being responsible for the strategic planning, implementation and coordination of MIHR capacity development programmes in intellectual property management.

Her work as a consultant for the Rockefeller Foundation resulted in the formation of MIHR. Prior to consulting to the Rockefeller Foundation, she worked for the Technology and Business Development Directorate at the Medical Research Council where she was responsible for establishing the Indigenous Knowledge systems office. The office addressed policy, ethical and intellectual property issues relating to health research of Indigenous Knowledge systems and technologies. She is a member of several international bodies concerned with Intellectual Property and its management and has published and presented numerous papers on this topic. In 2006 she completed the IMD, Mastering Technology Enterprises programme and the UNISA/WIPO IP Law programme.

Currently, Dr Pefile is Managing Director of Smart Innovation, a company that invests in technology enterprises and offers intellectual property management and technology transfer advisory services.