Departmental homepageHugh Matthews is Professor of Sensory Physiology and the Pre-clinical Director of Studies in Medical and Veterinary Sciences at St John's College. His undergraduate education at St John's included both Advanced Physics and Physiology within the Natural Sciences Tripos. This was followed by a PhD in Sensory Physiology at the Physiological Laboratory. On the basis of this work, he was elected to a Title A (Research) Fellowship at St John's, followed by a Senior Fellowship in Basic Biomedical Sciences from the Wellcome Trust and election to a Title B (Teaching) Fellowship at St John's. Shortly thereafter he was appointed to his University position at Cambridge, where his permanent affiliation has remained ever since, interspersed with numerous research visits to the USA.
In College supervisions, he teaches first-year systems physiology topics in both the Medical and Veterinary Sciences Tripos and in the Natural Sciences Tripos. In his University role, he delivers second-year lectures and runs practical classes on topics within cellular neurobiology and sensory physiology, while in the third-year course, he lectures on specialist topics in sensory transduction and runs numerous undergraduate research projects. He is joint Course Organiser for Neurobiology and Animal/Human Behaviour in the second year, and has frequently been Senior Examiner for this subject also. In 2008 he was awarded the Pilkington Prize for excellence in teaching by the University.
His research interests centre around the electrophysiology of excitable cells, most especially the rod and cone photoreceptors of the retina, the olfactory receptors of the nasal epithelium, and both skeletal and cardiac muscle. Using techniques including suction pipette recording and tight-seal and loose patch clamp recording, he has studied the electrophysiological properties of these cells in vitro. Central to this work has been the role of calcium ions as an intracellular messenger in modulating their responses. In parallel, in silico computational modelling has allowed the electrodiffusional properties of calcium in intercellular and subcellular microdomains to be studied.
