Marelie H. Davel is a Research Professor in the Faculty of Engineering at North-West University (NWU). She is the Director of the MUST Deep Learning research group and holds the national SARChI chair in Deep Learning. She also hosts a node of the Centre for Artificial Intelligence Research (CAIR), is a NITheCS (National Institute for Theoretical and Computational Sciences) Associate and a National Research Foundation (NRF) rated researcher.

She received her PhD from the University of Pretoria, South Africa, in 2005. Before joining NWU, she was a Principal Researcher and research group leader at the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), South Africa. She specialises in machine learning and, specifically, the theory and application of deep learning.

Her current research focuses on deep learning theory: developing a better understanding of how these models perform so well on unseen data, and why they make the decisions they do. Deep learning applications are developed with collaborators and students, with a specific interest in under-resourced deep learning (limited data, small and low-latency models).