Background and Professional Leadership
Dr Werner van der Merwe has been appointed to a newly formed role of Vice President, Innovation and Enterprise at Swinburne University, reporting to the Vice Chancellor. Werner has been with CSIRO since 2018 and is currently Executive Manager, Commercialisation. He was previously Business Development Manager at UNSW Innovations, having relocated to Australia in 2016 from South Africa.
Werner had an earlier extensive career at Sasol (SA/US listed multinational) where he worked in multiple countries in a range of engineering, R&D and commercialisation positions. Werner has a PhD in Engineering from the University of Pretoria (with a background in chemical engineering and fluid dynamics), is a graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors (AICD) and an INSEAD alumni. He currently serves on the boards of Knowledge Commercialisation Australasia and local manufacturing company Boron Molecular.