Professor Frances Ashcroft is Professor of Physiology at the University of Oxford, a Fellow of Trinity College Oxford since 1992, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of London since 1999.
Professor Ashcroft studied Natural Sciences at Cambridge University, and did post-doctoral research at Leicester University and the University of California at Los Angeles. Her research centres on how changes in blood glucose levels regulate insulin secretion from the pancreatic beta-cell and how this process is impaired in diabetes. She discovered that the ATP-sensitive potassium (KATP) channel serves as the molecular link between glucose elevation and insulin secretion. Mutations in KATP channel genes cause a rare inherited form of diabetes (neonatal diabetes), and her work with Professor Hattersley has enabled patients with this disorder to switch from insulin injections to drug therapy, which has led to substantial improvement in the patients’ clinical condition and quality of life. Her research and discoveries have greatly improved the treatment experience for diabetic patients, especially the life of neonatal diabetes patients.
Professor Ashcroft’s outstanding research has won her wide recognition from the academic community and numerous awards and prizes, including but not restricted to the L'Oréal/UNESCO for Women in Science Award (European Laureate) in 2012, the Croonian Lecture commissioned by the Royal Society in 2013, the Albert Renold Prize by the European Association for the Study of Diabetes in 2007, and the Jacobaeus Prize by the NovoNordisk Foundation in 2014.
Professor Ashcroft also makes an active contribution to the public understanding of science. She has written two critically acclaimed popular science books, Life at the Extremes (HarperCollins, 2000) and The Spark of Life - electricity in the human body (Penguin, 2012), which demonstrates not only her scientific spirit but also her literary qualities. Her work speaks of her great concerns for the fate of human beings and her profound humanistic mind. For her contributions to popular science, she was awarded the Lewis Thomas Prize for Science Writing in 2013.