Rate My Professor Nithaya Chetty

Professor Nithaya Chetty is Dean of the Faculty of Science at the University of the Witwatersrand. He is a theoretical and computational physicist whose research focuses on the quantum mechanical properties of electrons in solids, with particular emphasis in recent years on two-dimensional graphene-like materials. A notable 2012 publication with his students on the mechanical properties of graphene and boronitrene, appearing in Physical Review B, has received more than 350 citations and introduced a new physical property for two-dimensional materials while demonstrating graphene as the hardest known material from a two-dimensional compressibility perspective.

Chetty holds a BSc, BScHons, MSc and a PhD from the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana. He joined the University of the Witwatersrand in December 2019 as Dean of the Faculty of Science. Previously he served as Deputy Chief Executive Officer of the National Research Foundation overseeing the Astronomy portfolio during the construction phase of the MeerKAT Radio Telescope. He was President of the South African Institute of Physics from 2007 to 2009 and is currently Vice President of the International Union for Pure and Applied Physics. Chetty is a member of the Academy of Science of South Africa and received the NRF President’s Award in 1997. He was an American Fulbright Fellow for his graduate studies in 1985 and again for research leave in the United States two decades later. He has publicly advocated for academic freedom and the maintenance of intellectually free environments at universities.