Professor Clifford Woolf FRS

Clifford Woolf earned his MB, BCh, and Ph.D. degrees in South Africa and then moved to London where he became Professor of Neurobiology at University College London. In 1997 he was recruited by Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital and in 2010 became director of the Neurobiology Program at Boston Children’s Hospital.  He has received a Gill Distinguished Scientist award and Reeve-Irvine medal and was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Medicine. His research is devoted to investigating how functional, chemical, and structural plasticity of neurons is involved in both normal adaptive functions of the nervous system and in maladaptive changes that contribute to neurological diseases. His major discoveries are central sensitization as a driver of pain, preemptive analgesia, how to selectively inhibit nociceptors, and utilization of stem cell-derived human neurons to model disease and identify novel therapeutics.