The Society is delighted to recognise the experience, commitment and contributions of distinguished members by appointing our 2023 Fellow Members:
• Professor Omar Mahroo MA MB BChir PhD FRCOphth FHEA FRSB, University College London, UK
• Professor Bamidele Victor Owoyele PhD FNSN FNISEB, University of Ilorin, Nigeria
• Professor Holly Alice Shiels PhD, University of Manchester, UK
• Professor Changhao Wu MB MD PhD, University of Surrey, Guildford, UK
Professor David Attwell, President of The Society said:
This year’s Fellows represent the true breadth and diversity of the discipline. It is a pleasure to recognise their unique achievements and contributions to the physiological sciences.
The Fellowship appointments will be celebrated at the 2023 Member Forum, which will be held at The Royal Society on 1 December 2023.
Professor Omar Mahroo MA MB BChir PhD FRCOphth FHEA FRSB
University College London, UK
Omar Mahroo is a clinician scientist investigating retinal physiology and pathophysiology. He is a consultant ophthalmologist and retinal specialist at Moorfields Eye Hospital and St Thomas’ Hospital in London. He is also Professor of Retinal Neuroscience at University College London. He completed his medical degree (achieving a triple first class in his undergraduate years) and PhD at the University of Cambridge in 2004. His PhD at Cambridge and his post-doctoral work at the Australian National University were supervised by Trevor Lamb FRS, and investigated light and dark adaptation of human retinal photoreceptors and bipolar cells in vivo using the electroretinogram (ERG). He completed his ophthalmology training in London. He was appointed Academic Clinical Lecturer at King’s College London in 2011, setting up an ERG research laboratory at St Thomas’ Hospital in 2012, investigating retinal responses in the TwinsUK cohort, and also retinal mechanisms driving myopia. He completed a retinal fellowship at Moorfields Eye Hospital (2014-16). He was awarded a £1.1 million Wellcome Trust research fellowship in 2017 to investigate retinal function in health and disease and is Principal Investigator for a number of studies. He was named “Rising Star of the Year” by the Macular Society in 2019, and received awards for teaching excellence and for patient and public engagement from the UCL Institute of Ophthalmology and the Moorfields Biomedical Research Centre in 2020. He has co-authored over 130 publications (including in The Journal of Physiology, New England Journal of Medicine, Nature Genetics, Ophthalmology, Brain and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences). He has taken part in public engagement activities including contributing to the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures, televised in 2018. He has chaired symposia at The Physiological Society meetings and his research students have presented at several Society meetings.
Professor Bamidele Victor Owoyele PhD FNSN FNISEB
University of Ilorin, Nigeria
Bamidele Owoyele obtained his BSc and PhD in Physiology at the University of Ilorin while his Master’s degree was from the University of Ibadan, Nigeria. He is a tenured professor at the Department of Physiology, University of Ilorin where he has been teaching and doing research since 1999. He has been a member of The Physiological Society since January 2010. He is also one of The Physiological Society Representatives at the University of Ilorin He is the president of professional societies in Nigeria. These are the Neuroscience Society of Nigeria (NSN), the Society for Experimental Biology of Nigeria (NISEB), and the Society for the Study of Pain, Nigeria (SSPN). He is a Fellow of the Neuroscience Society of Nigeria and The Society for Experimental Biology of Nigeria. He is a Board member of many scientific journals. He is an external examiner to many universities within and outside Nigeria. His research focus is on pain and neuroinflammatory diseases. He has supervised many PhD theses, Master’s dissertations, and undergraduate projects. He is currently the Dean of the Postgraduate School at the University of Ilorin, Nigeria.
Professor Holly Alice Shiels PhD
University of Manchester, UK
Holly Alice Shiels is a Professor of Integrative Physiology at the University of Manchester, UK. Her research explores cardiac function in response to environmental change and how this impacts organismal metabolism, locomotion, and behaviour to determine the intersection of the cardiovascular system and the environment on fitness. Her lab works across species, across life stages and biological models, embracing comparative approaches to provide deeper understanding of the mechanisms which adjust or collapse at environmental extremes. Holly has been a member of The Physiological Society since arriving in the UK as an NSERC-Canada Fellow in 2002. She was the convener of the Comparative Physiology Special Interest Group and the recipient of The Physiological Society’s GSK award and prize lecture in 2012, before becoming a Trustee of the Society in 2015. In 2020 she was co-opted to the Conferences Committee for another 2 years where she helped direct the scientific agenda for The Physiological Society meetings. Holly has participated in a number of The Society’s outreach activities and membership drives including creating a 4-part blog on the physiology of extreme aging during one of her expeditions to the Arctic to study the Greenland shark. She has taught Animal Physiology at the University of Manchester since 2005 and is currently working with colleagues on the next edition of the Oxford University Press textbook ‘Animal Physiology’. She is currently a Director of the Company of Biologists and the President of the Fisheries Society of the British Isles.
Professor Changhao Wu MB MD PhD
University of Surrey, Guildford, UK
Changhao Wu is a professor in cell physiology at the University of Surrey. He studied medicine as his first degree followed by a Master’s degree in medicine and a PhD in physiology/pharmacology. He has worked in Sun Yat-sen University of Medical Sciences (China), Guy’s and St Thomas’ Medical School, University College London, and University of Surrey.
As a principal Investigator, he has carried out original research and made significant original contributions with a particular focus on the bladder tissues, smooth muscle, epithelial and interstitial cells.
Wu is the recipient of major research grants and/or scholarly funding and has received £2.5 million as PI from the BBSRC, NIH, The Wellcome Trust, The Royal Society and other funding bodies.
He has maintained consistent scholarly production in the form of journal articles and/or book chapters with over a hundred peer-reviewed publications in a physiology or a life science journal including The Journal of Physiology, Journal of Clinical Investigation, European Journal of Epidemiology, European Journal of Urology, Journal of Urology, Ecotoxicology and environmental safety, Journal of nanobiotechnology, FASEB Journal, Frontiers in Immunology, and Molecular Metabolism.
Wu is dedicated to education and teaching and has established reputation in developing innovative new courses and teaching methods in physiology and medicine.