Prof Ernesta Meintjes is a Professor in Biomedical Engineering at the University of Cape Town, and from 2007 to 2021 held the prestigious South African Research Chair in Brain Imaging. She completed her Bachelors, Honours and MSc degrees in Physics at the UKZN Pietermaritzburg campus, and a PhD in Physics at Oregon State University. Upon her return to South Africa in 1998, she joined the Biomedical Engineering Department of UCT as a postdoctoral fellow where she contributed to developing a stereophotogrammetric image-guided neurosurgical navigator. Following the commissioning of the first MRI scanner at Groote Schuur Hospital in November 2001, she embarked on establishing a research stream in Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) and in 2004 implemented the first functional MRI studies in South Africa. These studies led to the establishment of the Cape Universities Brain Imaging Centre (CUBIC), with subsequent expansion to the Cape Universities Body Imaging Centre, of which she has been director since its inception in 2015. Her research focuses on developing technology to track and correct motion during MRI scanning, and applying advanced imaging methods to study conditions particularly relevant to South Africa. These include studies on the effects of prenatal insults and diseases, such as HIV, maternal alcohol or drug use during pregnancy, as well as antiretroviral drugs taken by HIV-infected pregnant women, on brain development. She has authored/co-authored more than 140 peer-reviewed journal papers and more than 250 international conference papers, supervised to completion 26 PhD and 31 MSc students, and mentored 22 postdoctoral fellows. She is a fellow of both the University of Cape Town and the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE).