Work Experience: Eliton Chivandi is a Professor of Physiology in the School of Physiology, University of the Witwatersrand, where he has worked for the past 13 years rising from lecturer, Senior Lecturer and Associate Professor. Previously he worked as an Agricultural Extension Specialist (Livestock) for the Department of Agricultural, Technical and Extension Services.
Publications, Research & Postgraduate Student Training: Associate Professor Chivandi has published 79 journal articles with 95% of the articles in international peer-reviewed DoHET accredited journals as well as 3 book chapters. His research is on “Food and Nutrition Security” wherein he characterises in vitro and in vivo potential non-conventional feed resources and evaluates the potential application of crude medicinal plant extracts and phytochemicals in the livestock and poultry production chain. He also evaluates the potential of crude plant extracts and phytochemicals to prevent diet (obesogenic) induced metabolic derangements and diseases using rodent models. Since graduating with his PhD in 2012, Associate Professor Chivandi has supervised to graduation 11 MSc Medicine (Physiology) and 8 PhD candidates.
Awards and Recognition: Associate Professor Chivandi is a life member of the Golden Key International Honour Society, a recipient of the Helen Laburn Research Prize for Research Excellence and a C2 NRF rated scientist. He has collaborated with Professor Victor Preedy, a Professor of Nutritional and Clinical Biochemistry at King’s College, London and also the Director of the Genomic Centre at King’s College, London. The collaboration resulted in the publication of two book chapters with Professor Chivandi as the lead and corresponding author.
Current Research: Three projects are in progress. The first is interrogating the potential prophylactic effects of lycopene against diet-induced metabolic derangements; a second one is evaluating the potential of zingerone to substitute zinc bacitracin as a growth promoter in broiler chicken diets and the last is looking as β-sitosterol as a substitute to oxytetracycline in chicken feeds.
