Ryan D. Rattray

PhD: Botany

I am a botanist and early-career academic based in Johannesburg, South Africa. I completed my PhD in the Department of Botany and Plant Biotechnology at the University of Johannesburg (2024). Further, I am the Project Manager and Researcher for the DST-NRF Research Chair in Indigenous Plant Use.

My research interests span ethnobotany, medicinal plant science, phytochemistry, DNA barcoding, chemotaxonomy, and biodiversity informatics. I am particularly interested in how plant chemistry and traditional knowledge converge across cultural and ecological landscapes.

My current work focuses on:

Profiling the volatile and non-volatile chemistry of key South African medicinal plants in the Asteraceae, Lamiaceae, and Rutaceae families.
Investigating phylogenetic and chemophenetic patterns in Southern African flora to support conservation and traditional uses.
Exploring the essential oils of indigenous and aromatic South African plants.
Exploring the use of machine learning, and natural language processing to mine, map, and visualise ethnobotanical and phytochemical data.

I am passionate about collaborative, cross-cultural research that supports ethical knowledge co-production, Indigenous biocultural heritage, and biodiversity conservation.

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