Lizbé Koekemoer

Born and bred in South Africa, I completed my tertiary education at Stellenbosch university in Organic chemistry and Biochemistry. After completing my Masters I did a stint in the FMCG industry before returning to Stellenbosch for a PhD under the supervision of Prof Erick Strauss on all things CoA biosynthesis related in pathogenic bacteria. This was followed by a Postdoc at the university of Cape town based H3D, Africa’s first integrated drug discovery and development centre founded by Kelly Chibale, in Tuberculosis assay development. During my time at UCT I was fortunate enough be a visiting scientist in Chris Dowson’s laboratory at university of Warwick and I became interested in the application of crystallography and biophysical techniques fin early-stage drug discovery. In 2019 I joined the Structural Genomics Consortium (SGC) Oxford with Frank von Delft and Tobias Krojer to learn SBDD.  

I am a Team leader and protein crystallography small research facility (PX-SRF) coordinator at the Centre for Medicines Discovery (CMD) at University of Oxford.