By: Sane Dhlamini
Professor Tulio de Oliveira and Dr Sikhulile Moyo have been named in TIME Magazine’s prestigious 100 Most Influential People list, for their work in genomics and epidemiology, a vital field during the global Covid-pandemic. In November 2021, they led the multidisciplinary team that discovered the Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2, which quickly became the dominant variant of the virus, globally. De Oliveira is a Stellenbosch University Professor of Bioinformatics, holding a joint appointment at the university's School for Data Science and Computational Thinking, the Faculty of Science and the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences. Moyo obtained his PhD in Medical Virology at Stellenbosch University in 2016, and is Botswana Harvard AIDS Institute Partnership laboratory director. →