Joshua Davimes

(MENAFN- The Conversation)

• Senior Lecturer in Anatomical Sciences, University of the Witwatersrand

Profile Articles

Dr Joshua Davimes is a neuroscientist and anatomist whose research centres on sleep, and on how it is shaped by the environment and by demanding work. He completed his PhD at the University of the Witwatersrand, where he studied sleep and daily activity in wild mammals living in extreme conditions, including the Arabian oryx in the desert of Saudi Arabia. This work showed how strongly the "real feel" of environmental temperature governs when mammals sleep.

He now leads the Sleep Health Exploration in Extreme Populations (SHEEP) research group, which studies sleep, fatigue and mental health in people whose work places them under extreme demands. These include emergency doctors, ambulance paramedics and tactical police, groups whose sleep directly affects patient and public safety but who remain largely unstudied in Africa. His other research examines how electricity loadshedding affects the sleep and study habits of South African students, and sleep health among medical students across the country.

He teaches clinical anatomy and neuroanatomy to medical and health sciences students and coordinates anatomy teaching in the Graduate Entry Medical Programme. He chairs the Science Committee of the South African Society for Sleep and Health, is a Fellow of the Wits Machine Intelligence and Neural Discovery (MIND) Institute, and is a member of the World Sleep Society.

Experience

• –present Senior Lecturer in Anatomical Sciences, University of the Witwatersrand
• 2019–2021 Lecturer in Anatomical Sciences, University of the Witwatersrand
• 2016–2017 Lecturer in Anatomy, University of Johannesburg

Education

• 2018 University of the Witwatersrand, PhD (Anatomical Sciences)
• 2012 University of the Witwatersrand, BHSc Honours (Human Biology)
• 2011 University of the Witwatersrand, BSc (Anatomy and Physiology)

Grants and Contracts

• 2023 NRF Thuthuka Role: Principal Investigator Funding Source: National Research Foundation South Africa

Professional Memberships

• Anatomical Society of Southern Africa (ASSA)
• International Brain Research Organization (IBRO)
• Society of Neuroscientists of Africa (SONA)
• Southern African Neuroscience Society (SANS)
• South African Society for Sleep and Health (SASSH)
• World Sleep Society (WSS)

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