Dr Fernando Camilo is the Chief Scientist at the South African Radio Astronomy Observatory. He is a former Senior Research Scientist at Columbia University in New York, Director of Astronomy at Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, and Senior Research Scientist at Columbia University. He holds a B.S. degree in Physics and Mathematics from Stony Brook University in New York and a Ph.D. in Physics from Princeton University. As Chief Scientist at SARAO he directs the SKA SA science program and the scientific program of MeerKAT as a world-leading facility in the pre-SKA era, and work with the user community to ensure the maximum scientific productivity of the MeerKAT large survey projects and open time. His interests span radio magnetars, young neutron stars in supernova remnants, old pulsars in globular clusters, and most recently joint radio/gamma-ray emission from pulsars.