Oyena Mahlasela, CSIR

Oyena Mahlasela is a cybersecurity researcher at the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) and a PhD student at the University of Pretoria. She grew up in Durban and says she has “always been a tech enthusiast”. Her aptitude for STEM subjects was nurtured by her mom, a maths teacher, who even used her to benchmark tests: “If I finished too quickly, she knew she’d set it too easy.” After school, she completed a B.Com in Information Systems at Fort Hare University’s East London campus. With a cum laude undergrad degree to her name, she enrolled for her Honour’s degree with funding from her future employer, the CSIR.

For her internship, she found a spot with the National Treasury, prompting a move to Pretoria during the pandemic. “It was a hectic time to go from school to work, in a new city. I didn’t have any friends there and I felt something was missing,” she says, “so I decided to enrol for my Master’s.” She completed it in a year, and signed on for the doctoral course.