Mamello Thinyane is the University of South Australia Optus Chair of Cybersecurity and Data Science and Associate Professor in the STEM unit. He has over 15 years of experience working on multi-stakeholder and multi-disciplinary digital development projects in Africa and Asia. He has undertaken research on data for sustainable development, critically investigating the sustainable development data assemblages and developing solutions to support the active participation of civil society stakeholders in these data ecosystems. He has also led research on cyber resilience, undertaking policy-relevant research, innovating technology tools, and undertaking capacity-building activities to enhance the resilience of citizens and civil society stakeholders in smart digital futures.

Mamello is a former Senior Research Advisor and Principal Research Fellow at the United Nations University institute in Macau, Director of the Telkom Centre of Excellence in ICT for Development at the University of Fort Hare in South Africa, and a Visiting Researcher at the Australian Centre for Cyber Security at the University of New South Wales.