Speech topic: Astronomy for technological capacity building                             
                              
Anita Loots is a registered professional engineer with extensive international experience working on technology-rich and knowledge-intensive engineering programmes, consulting (primarily engineering and science domains), technology and knowledge transfer, project management, research & development as well as business development.

She has worked with the South African SKA programme since 2004 and is currently an Associate Director with a key responsibility to establish the African Very Long Baseline Interferometry Network (AVN) of telescopes on the continent. She has served on various committees and workgroups on the international SKA programme (including as a Board member of the PrepSKA project).

She is a member of the Science Advisory Committee of ASTRON, the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy. She is also a part-time researcher in engineering at the University of Stellenbosch in South Africa where she is registered for a PhD in Engineering, focusing on mega-projects in science and technology infrastructure and – in her role as (part-time) researcher at the faculty - supervise a number of Master’s undergraduate engineering students.