Professor Ian Jandrell
Deputy Vice-Chancellor: Systems and Operations
Prof. Ian Jandrell is the Deputy Vice-Chancellor: Systems and Operations. This is a crucial post which seeks to ensure that systems and operations are efficiently and effectively managed in order to adequately support the academic and research project of the University. His portfolio includes leadership of the following entities: Property and Infrastructure Management; Services; ICT; Campus Protection Services; Re-Imagining Wits’ Property Portfolio; and the implementation of the online strategy, among others.
A Personal Professor of Electrical and Information Engineering, Jandrell is an engineer and a scientist who has held executive management positions in the higher education sector in South Africa for over 20 years. He served as the Dean of the Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment since 2014 and prior to this served as the Head of the School of Electrical and Information Engineering for 10 years.
A registered local and international Professional Engineer, Prof. Jandrell has more than 30 years of experience in engineering, with a special focus on Lightning, High Voltage Engineering and Forensic Engineering. He served as the Transnet Professor of Systems Engineering in the Wits Transnet Centre for Systems Engineering on its establishment and held the CBI-electric Chair of Lightning. A widely published scientific author, Prof. Jandrell is a rated scientist with the National Research Foundation, recognised for more than 25 years. In 2018, he was honoured to receive the National Science and Technology Forum-South32 individual award for Engineering Research Capacity Development.
Some of Prof. Jandrell’s scientific work focuses on lightning injury and more broadly the risks associated with lightning. He and his team have published work on keraunopathology, the fifth and sixth mechanisms of lightning injury and most recently on lightning detection and location.
He is a Senior Member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), a Fellow of the South African Academy of Engineering and an Executive Committee member. He is also a Fellow of the South African Institute of Electrical Engineers.
He serves as a Member of the Scientific Committee of the International Conference on Lightning Protection and the IEEE International Conference on High Voltage Engineering and Application among many other roles. He has served as a reviewer of a number of international journals including the Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, the IEEE’s Transactions on Dielectrics and Electrical Insulation, and the Electric Power Systems Research Journal, among others.
Prof. Jandrell volunteers his time to the service of organisations promoting science education, including the Eskom Expo for Young Scientists in South Africa, and the Society for Science and the Public in the United States.