Episode 16: Dr. Adriana Marais
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Topics for Discussion
Dr. Marais and I will be discussing the following:
Her journey in her studies
The birth of ProudlyHuman
Our Future in Technology and Science in South Africa
Background about the Speaker
Dr. Adriana Marais is the founder of ProudlyHuman and is pioneering new frontiers in research and technology for a resilient future resilient future on Earth, Mars and beyond. She has recently visited the Antarctic interior and the Oman desert on location scouts for Proudly Human’s Off-World Project. The Project is a series of off-world settlement experiments, demonstrating off-grid capabilities from life-support to communication systems, as well as community spirit, in the most extreme environments on Earth.
Adriana is a Director at the Foundation for Space Development, an initiative of which is Africa2Moon, Africa’s first mission to the Moon, to inspire the youth of developing nations, in particular, Africa, to “Reach for the Stars” through education and science. She is also a member of the South African DHET Ministerial Task Team on the 4th Industrial Revolution, Faculty at the SingularityUniversity and Duke Corporate Education, and an astronaut candidate with the Mars One Project.
Previously, Adriana was Head of Innovation at SAP Africa between 2017 and 2019. Her career began in academia, and she has authored numerous articles on her research in theoretical quantum physics, as well as won awards including the L’Oreal-UNESCO International Rising Talent Award in 2015 and the Royal Society of South Africa Meiring Naude Medal in 2016. She is an alumna of the Lindau Nobel Laureate Physics program and a Global Women’s Forum Rising Talent, both 2016.
Adriana holds an MSc (summa cum laude) in quantum cryptography and a PhD in quantum biology. Her postdoctoral research focused on quantum effects in photosynthesis as well as the origins of prebiotic molecules and life itself. She is currently pursuing a second PhD in economics in team dynamics in extreme environments at the Graduate School of Business at the University of Cape Town.
