SAP Africa, has appointed Dr Adriana Marais to take on the role as head of innovation.
Based at head office in Johannesburg, Dr Marais will lead the IoT Lab, the Co-Innovation Lab initiatives, as well as other innovation streams for SAP while taking the company’s Digital Platform solutions to market.
She will also drive strategic co-innovation projects and take responsibility for the SAP Start-up Focus programme – which provides SME’s with digital solutions to help accelerate growth.
Dr Marais is also one of the top 100 candidates in the Mars-One project and aspires to be one of the astronauts involved in the development of a human settlement on the planet.
Commenting on her new role at SAP Africa, she says: “We live in the digital revolution where innovation is key to survival in today’s economy. What appealed to me about the role is that I can put my knowledge and experience into action and help transform Africa while changing the lives of people across the continent.”
Before joining SAP Africa, Dr Marais was a Postdoctoral Quantum Researcher at UKZN and lectured in physics at UCT. She received her BSc in physics and philosophy from UCT in 2003 and at BSc Honours in theoretical physics in 2004. During 2007-2009, Dr. Marais completed her MSc at UKZN in quantum cryptography and started working towards her PhD in quantum biology at the UKZN in 2010.