BIOSKETCH OF PROF SIAS HAMMAN

Sias obtained a BPharm (1995), MSc (1997) and PhD in Pharmaceutics (2001) from the North-West University in Potchefstroom, South Africa. He is currently a Research Professor at North-West University. Sias is an NRF rated researcher (C2 category), has published more than 40 articles in peer-reviewed international journals, is the author of 1 complete book and made contributions to 3 chapters in other books, participated at several international as well as national conferences and serves on the editorial boards of "Journal of Drug Delivery Science and Technology" and "Botanics: Targets and Therapy". He has supervised and co-supervised several postgraduate students both on the master’s and doctoral levels. He received the award as junior researcher of the year at Technikon Pretoria in 2001. Five master’s students under his supervision or co-supervision have won the young scientist competition in 1999, 2000, 2002, 2008 and 2010 and he is co-author of publications that were awarded the best publication in 2003, 2009 and 2010 at the annual conference of the Academy for Pharmaceutical Sciences of the Pharmaceutical Society of South Africa. His research interests include investigating the use of materials from natural origin to improve the absorption and bioavailability of drugs, herb-drug pharmacokinetic interactions and the use of natural polymers as excipients in dosage form design. For the biopharmaceutical related projects, in vitro models are used for transport studies including Caco-2 cell cultures and excised rat and porcine tissues (both intestinal and buccal tissue).