John Becker completed his postgraduate studies at Stellenbosch University’s Institute for Wine Biotechnology. He subsequently joined the CSIR’s Systems Biology platform; initially as post-doctoral research fellow and then as senior researcher.

He was appointed as Centre Manager of the African Centre for Gene Technologies (ACGT) in 2011. The ACGT is a collaborative initiative of science councils and universities in the Gauteng region. He has published genomics-related papers in the fields of plant-pathogen interactions and antimalarial drug discovery.