Professor Sakkie Pretorius is the serving Deputy Vice Chancellor (Research) at Macquarie University.

Passionate about authentic leadership, prior to taking up his role at Macquarie, Professor Pretorius held the role of Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Vice-President (Research and Innovation) at the University of South Australia. and was a former Managing Director and CEO of the Australian Wine Research Institute. He is internationally recognised as a pioneer in synthetic yeast genomics, biotechnology and translating research outcomes into innovative industry applications and has been a leader in the Yeast 2.0 consortium driving a stream of science for more efficient and eco-friendly biofuel production.