Dr. Marilize LE ROES-HILL obtained a PhD in Molecular and Cell Biology in 2005 from the University of Cape Town (UCT), South Africa, which was followed by three years of postdoctoral research at Chemical Engineering, UCT, and two years at the 
Biocatalysis and Technical Biology (BTB) Research Group, Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT) under the mentorship of Prof. Stephanie Burton. In 2011 she took over the leadership of the BTB Research Group, with the group later merging with other teams to ultimately form the Applied Microbial and Health Biotechnology Institute (AMHBI). She is currently an Associate Professor in Biotechnology, the Deputy-Director of AMHBI, and the CPUT Research Focus Area leader: Bioeconomy and Biotechnology. She is currently a review Editor for Frontiers in Catalysis, an Editorial Board Member for Data in Brief, and the Editor of the Royal Society of South Africa Newsletter. Her research interestsare focused on understanding actinobacterial diversity associated with different types of environments and the discovery of novel natural products and industrially relevant enzymes, as well as the potential application of these enzymes. This work has resulted in both national and international collaboration research networks, mostly on the European and African continents.