Daya Reddy is Professor Emeritus in applied mathematics at the University of Cape Town (UCT), and a graduate of the Universities of Cape Town and Cambridge. He served as dean of the science faculty over the period 1999 - 2005 and as vice-chancellor ad interim at UCT (Mar 2023 - Jul 2024). He has made major contributions, inter alia through more than 200 publications, to the analysis of and development of computational approaches to problems in mechanics, with applications in materials science and biomedical mechanics. Reddy was a founder member in 2003 of AIMS, the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences, a pan-African network of centres of excellence for postgraduate education, research and outreach with institutes in five African countries. He is actively involved in bodies that work at the science-society-policy nexus, and served terms as President of the Academy of Science of South Africa, and at the global level, as inaugural President of the International Science Council. Daya Reddy is a member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, a recipient of the Order of Mapungubwe, awarded by the President of South Africa for distinguished contributions to science, and of the Georg Forster Research Award from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation of Germany.