Rhian Touyz


Rhian Merry Touyz Koppel is a South African medical researcher. She is the Assistant Director of the Institute of Cardiovascular and Medical Sciences, University of Glasgow, and the Vice-President of the International Society of Hypertension.
She is the British Heart Foundation Chair of Cardiovascular Medicine and Director of the ICAMS BHF Award of Excellence.
She was previously the Canada Research Chair in Hypertension and Assistant Professor of Medicine at the Kidney Research Centre, Ottawa Hospital Research Institute /University of Ottawa, Canada.
Her research at the University of Glasgow primarily focuses on hypertension, cardiovascular disease and erectile dysfunction.

Early life and career

Touyz was born in Johannesburg, South Africa on September 14, 1959. She was educated in the arts and did her high school training at the Johannesburg High School for Art, Ballet and Music and received her BSc, MBBCh, MSc and PhD from the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa. She completed a post-doctoral fellowship at the Clinical Research Institute of Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
She was previously Scientist and Associate Professor at the Clinical Research Institute of Montreal, and the Canada Research Chair in Hypertension and Assistant Professor of Medicine at the Kidney Research Centre, Ottawa Hospital Research Institute /University of Ottawa, she has trained over 40 graduate and post - graduate students. She was involved in the writing of the annual Canadian hypertension guidelines and served as the co-chair of the Recommendations Task Force of the Canadian Hypertension Education Program.

Career and research

Touyz moved to the University of Glasgow from Canada in November 2011 to set up a new research programme at the British Heart Foundation Glasgow Cardiovascular Research Centre. As well as research, she has an active role in patient care, looking after people at the outpatient hypertension clinic at the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital, Glasgow. She also has a leadership role at the Institute of Cardiovascular and Medical Sciences, where she is the Assistant Director.
Touyz's main focus of research relates to molecular, cellular and vascular mechanisms of hypertension. She has written the book Reactive Oxygen Species and the Cardiovascular System, which describes how various oxygen species can affect the way that the cardiovascular system operates. She is a clinician-scientist and her areas of research include clinical and experimental hypertension and small vessel disease, signal transduction, oxidative stress, ion transport, vascular biology, adipose tissue biology and diabetes. She has a particular interest in translational and clinical research.
She serves as the editor-in-chief of Clinical Science and deputy editor of Hypertension She is the Associate Editor of Pharmacological Reviews

Awards and honours