Dear colleagues and students, it is with great pleasure that I announce that Professor Willem (Wim) de Villiers has been appointed as the Dean of the Faculty of Health Sciences at the University of Cape Town.

Professor de Villiers holds the degrees MBChB (Summa cum Laude, Stellenbosch University or SU, MMed (Int) (Summa cum Laude, SU), DPhil (Oxon, University of Oxford) and the Masters in Health Care Management (Harvard School of Public Health, Harvard University).

Professor de Villiers has recently been the Chief of the Division of Digestive Diseases and Nutrition at the Department of Medicine at the University of Kentucky, where he was professor of the same division for over six years. He has earned great respect for his research in gastroenterology (GI) during his career.

Professor de Villiers has won several awards for his studies and work, from being Dux Scholar at Paul Roos Gymnasium and the best final-year MBChB student at SU, to being selected as a prestigious Nuffield Dominion Medical Fellow at Wolfson College at the University of Oxford, followed by several consecutive annual awards for "Best Doctors in America".

Professor de Villiers has extensive experience as a local, regional, national and international speaker on inflammatory bowel disease, pathophysiology, translational science and clinic management. He is a Fellow of the American Gastroenterological Association and Honorary Fellow of the South African Gastroenterological Society.

His recent achievements include building up one of the largest GI clinical research centres in the US. The Inflammatory Bowel Disease Programme currently has more than 2500 active patients, with about 600 patients on biologic therapy. Professor de Villiers has also been the principal investigator on more than 35 industry-sponsored studies into inflammatory bowel disease.

Professor De Villiers will take up his new appointment on 1 July 2013. We look forward to the critical contribution he will make to the faculty and the university through his leadership. Please join me in welcoming him to the UCT community.

Sincerely

Dr Max Price

Vice-Chancellor