14 Sep Mr. McLean Sibanda – Innovation Hub CEO

Official MC for the IPASA Innovative Medicines Summit 2016

McLean Sibanda is an engineer and patent attorney. He has recently been appointed for a second term as the Chief Executive Officer of The Innovation Hub, a leading African Science Park. He has extensive experience in intellectual property, entrepreneurship and innovation; having co-funded Sibanda & Zantwijk attorneys.  He has a lot of experience working with startups from a funding and incubation perspectives.

He has been a judge in a number of local and international competitions, having also been the Chief Judge of the Innovation Prize for Africa (IPA2015). He has held senior and executive roles in a number of private and public sector organisations in South Africa.  He has served as an Expert to the African Union (AU), World Intellectual Property Organisation, and the Department of Science and Technology on intellectual property and innovation matters.

An immediate past board member of the CSIR, past acting executive director of the Innovation Fund (2008-2010) and Technology Innovation Agency Group Executive for Commercialisation until 2011; he currently serves on the boards of the National Intellectual Property Management Office (NIPMO), IASP, and African Agricultural Technology Foundation (AATF).

McLean has an active interest in the development of the biosciences sector with particular interest on health and agro-processing and has led the establishment of the Gauteng BioPark Initiative under The Innovation Hub; and been active participant of the BIO Conference in the past 4 years.