Prof Sudesh Sivarasu
DSTI/NRF SARChI Chair in Biomedical
Engineering and Innovation University of
Cape Town
Professor Sudesh Sivarasu holds the DSTI/NRF South African Research Chair (SARChI) in Biomedical Engineering and Innovation at the University of Cape Town, where he is Head of the Division of Biomedical Engineering and Director of the Biomedical Engineering Research Centre (BMERC). His research focuses on the design and translation of affordable, appropriate medical technologies, guided by the Frugal BioDesign methodology he developed and which is now applied in medical device programmes across several continents.
Professor Sivarasu has secured more than R315 million in research funding through competitive national and international grants. His intellectual property portfolio spans 24 patent families, 71 patent applications and 31 granted patents in jurisdictions including the United Kingdom, the United States, the European Union, India, China and South Africa. Technologies from his laboratory have led to five spinout companies: Impulse Biomedical, Vas MedTech, Khaya HealthTech, HealthShot and reScribe.
Products from these ventures include the Easy Squeezy assistive inhaler, the ZiBiPen reloadable adrenaline auto-injector, the FlexiGyn portable hysteroscope and the Inspyre sleep apnoea device. Alongside this commercial pipeline, he has also released six open-source innovations, namely the UCT ViZAR face shield, the UCT OpenAir ventilator, the UBUNTU Booth, the UCT Hearo, the Ptosis Crutch and the UCT ADL Arm.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Professor Sivarasu led the academic contribution to South Africa’s National Ventilator Project in support of the CSIR, through which 20 000 ventilators were manufactured and distributed. In total, more than 100 000 medical devices arising from his work have been deployed globally through commercial and humanitarian channels.
He has produced 145 scholarly outputs, including 65 peer-reviewed journal articles and two books, Frugal Innovation (2026) and Medical Devices Innovation for Africa (2023), and contributed to the WHO policy book Development of Medical Device Policies (2025). His work has attracted 23 awards across four continents, including the NSTF-South32 TW Kambule Award for Emerging Researcher, the DST Innovation Bridge Award, and the UCT Deputy Vice-Chancellor’s Award for Achievement in Innovation.
Professor Sivarasu was elected to the Global Young Academy and the South African Young Academy of Science for the period 2019 to 2024, where he served as Co-Chair and on the Executive Committee. He is President of the Biomedical Engineering Society of South Africa and serves on the IFMBE Administrative Council and the WHO Health Technology Access Programme. He has supervised more than 100 postgraduate researchers, many of whom now lead medical device companies and academic research groups.