Congratulations to the early career researcher prize winners for their presentations on heat physiology and integrative environmental physiology at the 2026 Climatic Physiology Group meeting.
On Tuesday 1 September, senior scientists, PhD students and postdocs, gathered within the historic Great Hall at King’s College London for the 2026 Climatic Physiology Group (COG) meeting. The meeting was organised by Dr Josh Foster (King’s College London (UK) and convenor of the Climatic Physiology Group) and Professor Mike Tipton (President of the Physiological Society) to discuss all aspects of climatic physiology, including thermal stress, micro/hypergravity and hypo/hyperbaric physiology, encompassing laboratory, computational and field-based experimentation.
Early career researchers showcased their projects and research receiving world-class review from more experienced colleagues. Join us in celebrating the awardees as we reveal the prize winners for the short talks and poster presentations:
Early Career Researcher Oral Competition Winners
Emily Whitehead (King’s College London, UK)
Talk title: The impact of passive whole-body heat stress on sympathetic transduction to blood pressure in humans
Sofia Pappa (Maastricht University, UK)
Talk title: Energy metabolism and thermoregulatory responses to 32 h heat exposure in healthy, young adults
Dr Charlotte Stevens (University of Southampton, UK)
Talk title: Localised cooling downregulates acute inflammatory responses to repeated mechanical shearing at the heel skin in young and older adults and in spinal cord injury patients
Early Career Researcher Poster Competition Winners
Joseph Killick (Cardiff Metropolitan University, UK)
Poster title: Seasonal variations in intravascular volumes and haemoglobin mass
Rohan Boyapti (Imperial College London, UK)
Poster title: Heat stress associated with Personal protective equipment: Impact on cognitive workload in surgical operators
Sarah Schonenberg (Loughborough University, UK)
Poster title: Beat the heat: Acclimation in para triathletes
The awardees and the meeting organisers on stage at the CPG meeting at King’s College London. From left to right: Dr Josh Foster, Joseph Killick, Emily Whitehead, Rohan Boyapti, Sofia Pappa, Sarah Schonenberg, Dr Charlotte Stevens, and Professor Mike Tipton.
This year’s CPG meeting marked its welcome return in over 20 years. “Rising from the ashes,” declare Dr Josh Foster and Professor Mike Tipton in their editorial on the history and renewed need for this meeting. The CPG was a one-day meeting that took place annually between 1960 and 2003, but ceased due to a lull in researchers working on extreme environmental physiology. “But times change,” write Dr Foster and Professor Tipton, “There has been a significant growth in the number of laboratories researching extreme environmental physiology. Physiology is increasingly recognised as pivotal to global issues such as climate change.”
To advance the field of climatic physiology, Dr Foster and Professor Tipton want the revived CPG meeting to enable all of those working in a lab, from senior scientists to newly registered postgraduates, to gather annually to share insights, celebrate scientific progress, and to create and widen networks.
The meeting was hosted by the Aerospace Medicine and Extreme Physiology (AMEP) research group, in association with the Physiological Society. View the programme to see the topics presented and read the editorial ‘Rising from the ashes: the return of The Climatic Physiology Group meeting’ to learn how the meeting can help maintain growth in environmental physiology.