Noble Banadda

Noble Banadda (born c.1975) is a Ugandan biosystems engineer, researcher and academic, who is a Professor of Biosystems Engineering at Makerere University, Uganda's largest and oldest public university. He was appointed as a full professor in 2012 at age 37, the youngest person in the history of the university to attain full professorship.

Banadda was born in Kampala, Uganda's capital city, circa 1975. After attending local primary and secondary schools, he was admitted to Sokoine University of Agriculture, in Morogoro, Tanzania, graduating with a Bachelor of Science in Food Science and Technology.

His Master of Science degree in Process Engineering, together with his Doctor of Philosophy degree in Chemical Engineering, were both obtained from Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, in Leuven, Belgium. Later he studied in a post-doctoral fellowship at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in the United States.

He was the first sub-Saharan African person to graduate with a PhD in Chemical Engineering from the Katholieke Universiteit-Leuven in Belgium.. Noble is a Research Fellow at the University of Cambridge, United Kingdom..

Banadda has had a trailblazing scientific career. He was hired by Makerere University, serving in the Department of Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering, in the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences. As of November 2018, he is the head of that department. In 2012, he made full professor at age 37.

His research focus areas are in the bioprocessing engineering field and include mathematic modeling of biological systems and interactions. This involves the use of observed biological data, to predict what is likely to happen, before it happens. He is the leader of a team that pioneered the first-ever farmer-based low cost multiple purpose vehicle in Uganda. His goal is to create value-added products from solid biowaste resources.

Banadda is a Fellow of the Uganda National Academy of Sciences and a Professor of Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering at Makerere University. He is also a Laurate of the Next Einstein Fellowship. He has thus far published research findings in over 130peer-reviewed publications.

In November 2018, he was selected as the winner of the 2018 Pius XI Medal Award. "The Pius XI Medal is a global award given every two years by the Pontifical Academy of Sciences to a scientist under the age of 45, who has conducted and shown exceptional promise in scientific research". He is the first African to receive this award since it was established on 28 October 1961. He was elected to the Global Young Academy.