Prof. James Maina joined the department of civil engineering, University of Pretoria in October 2014. Prior to joining the university, he was working at the CSIR where he joined as senior researcher in 2005 and became the first black Chief Researcher in 2009. This he achieved through his outstanding leadership in the advancement of science, engineering and technology specifically in his field of expertise, namely, transport infrastructure engineering. Prof. Maina hails from Tanzania where he obtained his initial training as a civil engineer and graduated as the best civil engineering student. He then joined Tanzanian National Construction Council (NCC) as assistant consultant. In 1994, and as a result of his academic achievements, he received the prestigious Monbusho scholarship for post-graduate studies in civil engineering in Japan. He studied at the Miyazaki University where he obtained both his MEng in 1997 and PhD in 2000. Upon his graduation, Prof. Maina joined the Research Institute of NIPPO Corporation in Tokyo. NIPPO is the biggest road construction company in Japan. In 2003, through the fellowship of Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS), Prof. Maina moved to Tokyo Denki University as a visiting scholar until 2005 when CSIR offered him a position as a senior researcher at their Pretoria campus. Between May 2013 and Sept 2014, Prof. Maina took a Sabbatical leave from the CSIR and went to work in Doha, Qatar as a senior pavement expert on a Quality Assurance/Quality Control project funded by the Qatar’s Public Works Authority (PWA) and managed by Italian national roads agency - ANAS S.q.A. Prof. Maina returned to South Africa and joined the University of Pretoria as a professor of civil engineering in October 2014.

Fields of interest are Pavement Engineering, Mathematical modelling and numerical analysis, Physical modelling, Full scale testing and instrumentation and Geotechnical Engineering.