Prof. Arnesh Telukdarie

Professor Arnesh Telukdarie is a Professor of Digital Business at the Johannesburg Business School, University of Johannesburg. He is also an Adjunct Professor at Johns Hopkins University and as a Visiting Scholar at London South Bank University.

Born in Durban, he completed a Doctorate in Technology at the Durban Institute of Technology (DUT). He has held various academic and industry positions including and most recently Senior Manager at Sasol. He has headed up Sasol’s Global Manufacturing Systems team.

Prof Telukdarie was privileged enough to commence his first job at BHP Billiton, in Richards bay, with the startup of the hillside smelter. He subsequently lectured at DUT, Chemical Engineering. Here he completed his masters and PhD in Chemical Engineering with deep interest in Artificial intelligence and modelling. Prof Telukdarie received an National Research Foundation (NRF) scholarship to complete his doctorate in collaboration with Wayne State University in the USA.

In 2007, he Joined Sasol as a Senior Engineer: Manufacturing Systems and was soon promoted to Principal Engineer then Senior Manager. Here he headed up the design, implementation and maintenance of all manufacturing systems in South Africa. He also had the privilege of heading up the design phase of the US, Lake Charles, MES implementation. He took a voluntary retrenchment from Sasol at the end of 2014, and joined UJ in January 2015.

Prof Telukdarie has consulted on various large projects including the largest uranium mine in Namibia. Here an integrated mining system was designed and implemented. He has consulted to Transnet, ArclorMittal, Johannesburg Water, over 50 metal finishing companies, the textile cluster and to the CSIR. He has held various projects with the Danish government and UNIDO. Projects include systems design and integration together with optimisation and cleaner production.

At UJ, he has worked on various initiatives including, GES4.0, Accenture work readiness, Devland 4IR facility and the News 24 building. He has completed various industrial projects and currently has a Research Chair with the Food and Beverage Manufacturing SETA. He has secured prestigious internal funding such as the Newton Fund via the Royal Academy of Engineers.

Prof Telukdarie has published over 150 conference proceeding, with over 50 journal papers and has graduated over 90 masters and PhD students. He has won various conference awards based on research publication and chairs various conference tracks. He currently reviews for over 10 international journals.

His research interest focuses on modelling and optimisation of businesses, this includes large corporates, and Small, Medium and Micro Enterprises (SMMEs). He has various projects internal to UJ and externally focusing on a variety of areas from business, mining, water, health, childhood development, petrochemical, manufacturing, waste and recycling.

Professorial Inauguration