Biosketch

Prof Kathy Myburgh

Kathryn Myburgh is a Distinguished Professor at Stellenbosch University, South Africa. Having joined the faculty in 1997 and the Senate in 2002, Kathy was appointed the title of Distinguished Professor in 2014. She has served both as Head of the Department of Physiological Sciences and Professor of Physiological Sciences, and is an expert in integrative human biology and exercise physiology. Kathy’s research focuses on advancing the understanding of human skeletal muscle adaptation and regeneration.

Kathryn obtained her Post Doctoral Fellow from Stanford University. She also obtained a Postdoctoral Fellow of the Cardiovascular Research Institute from the University of California, San Francisco - School of Medicine. Her PhD came from the University of Cape Town. After earning her PhD from the University of Cape Town, Kathy went on to complete postdoctoral research in Geriatrics at Stanford University and later became a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of California San Francisco School of Medicine. There, she was a recipient of a Muscular Dystrophy Association Postdoctoral Fellowship.

Since returning to South Africa, Kathy’s research work remains nationally and internationally recognized as excellent. She is a Fellow of the American College of Sports Medicine (FACSM), and a Member of the Academy of Science of South Africa (ASSAf). Kathryn is the leader of a muscle biology muscle group. She also serves on multiple editorial boards of highly respected journals in her field of research.

Her Research Group does studies at different levels of complexity from molecular, cellular and laboratory models to human volunteers. The aim is to generate new findings at the basic biology level and to determine how such findings may also apply to human beings, including athletes. In 2012, she was invited to serve on the inaugural Expert Panel of the Gatorade Sports Science Institute in the USA and she is currently a collaborator on the European Union grant for the study of Muscle Stress Relief.