Marietjie Venter obtained her PhD(Medical Virology) through Wits (2003) on Respiratory Syncytial Virus and received postdoctoral training at the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases, USA(2003) on West Nile virus. She worked on respiratory- and zoonotic arboviruses since 1999, as medical scientist at the National Institute for Communicable diseases, (NICD) National Health laboratory Services (NHLS) and University of Pretoria. From 2009-2014 she was co-director, Centre for Respiratory diseases and Meningitis, NICD and Director, National Influenza Centre at the NICD. From 2014-2016 she worked for the US-Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (US-CDC), Global Disease Detection Centre, South Africa as One Health Program director. 

In 2016 she took up a full time position as Full Professor (Medical Virology) to head the Zoonotic arbo & respiratory virus program in the Centre for Viral Zoonoses, Department Medical Virology, University of Pretoria. She has >130 publications in international accredited journals and >4000 citations in the scientific literature in the fields of respiratory, arbo and emerging viruses. She won the National Science and technology Forum (NSTF) award (2013) for the best output by a senior scientist over 5-10y in South Africa. She acts as advisor to the World Health Organization (WHO) on Respiratory syncytial viruses and Influenza surveillance and serves on the Scientific Advisory board of the Global One Health Platform on Zoonotic diseases. She is currently the Vice President for Africa for the World Society for Virology (2020-).