Thomas Niesler obtained the B.Eng (1991) and M.Eng (1993) degrees in Electronic Engineering from the University of Stellenbosch, South Africa and a Ph.D. (1998) from the University of Cambridge, England on the subject of statistical language modelling for large vocabulary speech recognition. He joined the Department of Engineering, University of Cambridge, as a lecturer in 1998 and subsequently the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, University of Stellenbosch, in 2000, where he has been Professor since 2012. His research interests lie in the areas of signal processing, pattern recognition and machine learning. Currently, his research considers applications of deep learning in health technology, low-resource speech and language recognition and endangered species conservation. He leads a group of approximately 15 postgraduate students and post-doctoral fellows.