TWAS is dedicated to advancing science in developing countries by supporting sustainable prosperity through research, education, policy, and diplomacy. With more than 1,400 elected fellows representing 112 countries, TWAS counts 13 Nobel laureates among its ranks. Of those, about 84 percent are from developing nations. The rest are scientists from developed countries whose work has significantly impacted developing nations.

Tommie is widely regarded as an expert in Knowledge Representation and Reasoning (KR), a field of Artificial Intelligence (AI) that deals with explicit, symbolic, declarative representations of information along with inference procedures for deriving further, implicit information from these representations – thereby being the core of Symbolic Artificial Intelligence. Typically, these symbolic representations encode information on some domain of application. The key idea is that the information describes the domain, without specifying how the information is to be used. Accompanying the information is a collection of procedures that perform inferences on the information, possibly interacting with the external world via sensors and actuators, and possibly modifying the information. Together, the knowledge base and its managing procedures form what is known as a knowledge-based system.

Through his work, Tommie Meyer conducts cutting-edge research that has made substantial and lasting contributions to the advancement of science in South Africa and internationally. His research excellence, intellectual leadership, and sustained impact have earned him wide recognition within the global scientific community. The main criterion for election as a TWAS Member is scientific excellence. Only Nominees receiving the favourable vote by the majority of TWAS Fellows present at the General Meeting are elected.

About Tommie Meyer

Tommie Meyer is a Professor of Computer Science at the University of Cape Town (UCT), holder of the DSTI/NRF-UCT Research Chair in Symbolic Artificial Intelligence, Deputy Director of the Artificial Intelligence Research Unit (AIRU), and Co-Director of the Centre for Artificial Intelligence Research (CAIR). As Associated Fellow of SECAI, he organises the SECAI sponsored scientific symposium Cape-KR – a scientific symposium to promote the AI sub-discipline of knowledge representation – and is coordinator at the UCT for the SECAI student exchange program with South Africa, through which SECAI regularly hosts UCT students since 2024.

[Excerps from the TWAS Website; TWAS, the voice for science in the South]