Prof Victoria Madden, University of Cape Town
Professor Tory Madden is a clinical physiotherapist with a PhD from the University of South Australia (2016), for which she was awarded the Ian Davey Best Research Thesis Prize (2017). Prof Madden draws on neuroscience, psychology, and physiology to explore the mechanisms by which pain persists after bodily tissues have healed. She intends for her research to provide a foundation for new strategies to prevent and treat persistent pain.
She established the University of Cape Town’s first experimental pain laboratory, where human volunteers are tested in procedures that mimic clinical pain, as a means to understand how persistent pain occurs. In 2019 she was awarded an Emerging Global Leader (K43) Career Development Award from the US National Institutes of Health (NIH). She is also the director of the African Pain Research Initiative at the University of Cape Town.
Her work has also garnered funding from the International Association for the Study of Pain (2016) and the NRF (2018). Prof Madden holds a Y2 NRF rating.