Biography
Simon Mendelsohn is a clinician-scientist and Associate Professor at the University of Cape Town (UCT), based at the South African Tuberculosis Vaccine Initiative (SATVI). He studied medicine at UCT and later attended the University of Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, completing Masters degrees in Immunology and in International Health and Tropical Medicine, before going on to complete a PhD in Clinical Science and Immunology at UCT. His route after Oxford was slightly less conventional than most: he may be the first Rhodes Scholar to have gone down directly to Malawian prison, albeit while working with Médecins Sans Frontières on HIV and tuberculosis (TB) programmes. He now leads and collaborates on research focused on TB screening and diagnostic strategies, particularly non-sputum and non-invasive approaches to improve case detection in high-burden settings. His work spans biomarker discovery, diagnostic evaluation, and a broad portfolio of clinical trials research, including TB vaccine, treatment, and diagnostic trials.