Dr. Els, Emeritus Professor of Physiology, has received his education in South Africa, England and the United States.  He has been educating medical students for 40 years, having taught physiology at the Medical School at the University of Cape Town and for the last 18 years in the School of Medicine at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he served as Director of Medical Physiology.  His main field of interest is in Renal Physiology.  He is an electrophysiologist who has been doing research into the regulation of Na channels in the distal renal tubule.  He played rugby in South Africa and England and outside the laboratory he likes to play tennis.