Wits Department of Physiology

Congrats to Andrea Kolkenbeck-Ruh and collaborators on their latest publication

Cash transfers targeting adolescent wellbeing: a scoping review of the literature in low- and middle-income countries Creating healthy food environments is central to improving adolescent nutrition; a life-stage characterised by rapid growth, body composition changes and heightened nutrient requirements. In low- a...

Congrats to Kennedy, Xitsakiso, Muzi and collaborators on their latest publication

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/20503121261434123

Congrats to Andrea Fuller on her latest publication

Note: The image accompanying this article is for illustrative purposes only and does not depict the author.

Two years at the editor’s desk: reflections on community, diversity and impact As I conclude my second year as Editor-in-Chief of Conservation Physiology, I look back on a challenging but enjoyable period, shaped by my commitment to m

We are delighted to learn that one of our alumni, Clifford Woolf, is one of the outstanding researchers from across the world that has been elected to the Fellowship of the Royal Society, the UK’s national academy of sciences, this year. https://royalsociety.org/news/2026/05/new-fellows-announcement-2026/

Clifford Woolf was one of the first students at Wits to complete the MBBCh and PhD degrees concurrently. His 1979 PhD, on electroanalgesia, was supervised by Duncan Mitchell in the Brain Function Research Group. He left South Africa to join the Middlesex Hospital in London and then University College London, where he worked with legendary pain neuroanatomist Patrick Wall. In 1997 he was appointed to the Chair of Anesthesia Research at Harvard Medical School and later transferred to his current position as Director of the F.M. Kirby Neurobiology Center at Boston Children’s Hospital. Clifford Woolf is famous for his discovery of pain centralisation (pain that persists without activation of pain sensors) and of pre-emptive analgesia (preventing not relieving surgical pain), and for his research using neurons from human stem cells to study pain.

The photograph shows Clifford Woolf as a PhD student in the Department of Physiology.

Thank you to all the staff and students who participated in the Reach for a Dream initiative and wore their slippers on Friday, 29th May!

A big thank you to Vernice, Andrea K and Glenda for providing the lovely treats for the hot chocolate station.

Congrats to Andrea, Jessica, Robyn, Keafon and collaborators on their latest publication

https://brill.com/search?f_0=author&q_0=Jacqueline+La+Grange-Mostert

Congrats to Karabo, Dhuriya and Courtney for great talks in the free paper competition at PainSA.

Congrats Courtney for taking home the prize for best talk! 👏

Peter also gave a plenary talk that was well received.

Members of Brain Function Research Group, Pain Lab participated in PainSA this past weekend weekend. Here they are with friends from UCT - Romy, Tory and Gill.

Congrats to Walter, Andrea and collaborators on their latest publication

Capturing the unseen: A low‐cost method for stratified subterranean sampling of soil invertebrates in drylands We developed a low-cost, stratified subterranean trap for live capture of soil macrofauna in the sandy, dryland soils of the southern Kalahari. The subterranean traps sampled below-ground taxa and li...

Congrats to IMPRI on their latest publication.

And a big congratulations to Adalayne on her first first-author paper.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0014480026000250