Frances Ashcroft
Dame Frances Ashcroft | |||
---|---|---|---|
Born | Frances Mary Ashcroft 15 February 1952 [1] |
||
Nationality | British | ||
Fields | <templatestyles src="Plainlist/styles.css"/> | ||
Institutions | <templatestyles src="Plainlist/styles.css"/> | ||
Alma mater | University of Cambridge | ||
Thesis | Calcium electrogenesis in insect muscle (1978) | ||
Notable awards | <templatestyles src="Plainlist/styles.css"/>
|
||
Website www |
|||
|
Dame Frances Mary Ashcroft, DBE, FRS, FMedSci, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , (born 1952) is a British geneticist and ion channel physiologist. She is Royal Society GlaxoSmithKline Research Professor at the University Laboratory of Physiology at the University of Oxford. She is a fellow of Trinity College, Oxford and is a director of the Oxford Centre for Gene Function. Her research group has an international reputation for work on insulin secretion, type II diabetes and neonatal diabetes.[3][4] Her work with Professor Andrew Hattersley has helped enable children born with diabetes to switch from insulin injections to tablet therapy.[5][6]
Education
After attending Talbot Heath School Ashcroft gained a degree in Natural Sciences, and then a PhD in zoology from Cambridge in 1978.[7][8] Ashcroft then did post-doctoral research at the University of Leicester and the University of California at Los Angeles.[9]
Career
Ashcroft is a Director of OXION: Ion Channels and Disease Initiative, a research and training programme on integative ion channel research, funded by the Wellcome Trust.[10]
Research
Ashcroft's research focuses on ATP-sensitive potassium (KATP)channels and their role in insulin secretion. Ashcroft is working towards explaining how a rise in the blood glucose concentration stimulates the release of insulin from the pancreatic beta-cells, what goes wrong with this process in type 2 diabetes, and how drugs used to treat this condition exert their beneficial effects.[11] Ashcroft has authored a few science and popular science books based on ion channel physiology:
- Ion Channels and Disease: Channelopathies on channelopathic diseases [12]
- Life at the Extremes: The Science of Survival [13]
- The Spark of Life: Electricity in the Human Body[14]
Honours and awards
Ashcroft was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1999.[15] In 2007 Ashcroft was awarded the Walter B. Cannon Award, the highest honour bestowed by the American Physiological Society.[16] She was one of five 2012 winners of the L'Oreal-UNESCO Award for Women in Science.[17]
Ashcroft was awarded an honorary degrees of Doctor of the University from the Open University in 2003 and Doctor of Science from the University of Leicester on 13 July 2007.[8]
Ashcroft delivered the Croonian Lecture at the Royal Society in 2013.[18]
In the 2015 Queen's Birthday Honours, she was appointed a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) 'for services to Medical Science and the Public Understanding of Science'.[19]
Personal life
Ashcroft appeared (as a diner) on MasterChef during the 2011 series, along with several other Fellows of the Royal Society.
References
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found. (subscription required)
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Frances Ashcroft talks to ReAgent about career advice for scientists
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ 8.0 8.1 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ 1999, Academic Press, ISBN 0120653109
- ↑ 2000, Harper Collins, ISBN 0141046538
- ↑ 2012, W. W. Norton and Company, ISBN 0006551254
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Ashcroft receives L'oreal-UNESCO Award for Women in Science
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ The London Gazette: (Supplement) no. 61256. p. B8. 13 June 2015. Retrieved 12 June 2015.
- Pages containing links to subscription-only content
- 1952 births
- Living people
- Place of birth missing (living people)
- Academics of the University of Leicester
- British geneticists
- British physiologists
- British women scientists
- Dames Commander of the Order of the British Empire
- Electrophysiologists
- Female Fellows of the Royal Society
- Fellows of Girton College, Cambridge
- Fellows of the Academy of Medical Sciences
- Fellows of Trinity College, Oxford
- Fellows of the Royal Society
- L'Oréal-UNESCO Awards for Women in Science laureates