United Through Diabetes 2024 - Meet the Researchers

Dr Adaikala Antonysunil is a Senior Lecturer in Biochemistry, School of Science and Technology. She has a master’s degree in medical Biochemistry and PhD (2006) in the field of diabetes. Her PhD focused on one of the large epidemiologic studies to elucidate oxidative damage in diabetes. For her post-doctoral-fellowship at University of Essex, she continued the research in diabetes complications and subsequently at the University of Warwick to understand the role of B-vitamins in diabetes. This inspired her to pursue research in delineating the epigenetic mechanisms of the micronutrient in obesity and cardiovascular risk. She set up an independent lab to investigate the potential mechanisms of B12 on obesity and gestational diabetes. In 2017, she joined the NTU and believes understanding the role of micronutrients on the health of the mother and their babies would offer novel opportunities to reduce the risk of metabolic disease in next generation.

Prof Katharine Barnard is a Visiting Professor and internationally renowned expert who specializes in the psychosocial impact and management of illness and long-term conditions. She led the only team ever to be awarded FDA MDDT qualification for a patient-reported outcome measure in diabetes (INSPIRE). Katharine Chairs the FDA RESCUE Global Collaborative Community to reduce incidents of self-injury and suicide in diabetes.  She has extensive experience in developing the evidence base and theory behind psychological interventions, in clinical trials design, management, analysis, reporting, dissemination and exploitation of project outcomes. As PI or co-Investigator on several university, industry, NIHR and NIH-funded grants, her research portfolio spans psychosocial aspects of diabetes management, health technology assessment, translational medicine and impact of technologies on the lives of people with diabetes.

Professor Ketan Dhatariya graduated from the University of London in 1991 and did his diabetes and endocrinology training in and around London. He was also a part time General Practitioner and also spent a year doing intensive care medicine and anaesthetics. After his training, he took on a research fellowship in endocrinology at Mayo Clinic. He was appointed as a consultant in diabetes, endocrinology and general medicine at the Norfolk & Norwich University Hospital in 2004, and Honorary Professor of Medicine at the University of East Anglia in 2019. He has several national roles in the UK. He is the Chair of the Association of British Clinical Diabetologists, and was also the Chair of the Joint British Diabetes Societies Inpatient Care Group. He is the Chair of the Examining Board for the UK Specialist Clinical Exam in Diabetes and Endocrinology. He is the Section Co-editor for diabetes with Endotext. He is an Associate Editor of Diabetic Medicine and until 2023 was an associate editor of BMJ Open Diabetes Research & Care.

Mark is a Professor of Diabetic Medicine based in the University of Cambridge’s Institute of Metabolic Science and a Consultant Physician working in diabetes and general medicine in Cambridge University Hospitals (Addenbrookes). He trained in Medicine in London, including time spent as a research fellow at Kings College Hospital in London and then at Yale University in USA. He moved to Cambridge in 2002 to set up his own research team. His clinical and academic interests are in hypoglycaemia, type 1 diabetes, immunotherapy, medical technology and structured education for diabetes.

Dr Vicky Garfield is a genetic epidemiologist with a background in psychology and statistics at the University of Liverpool’s Department of Pharmacology and Therapeutics. Her research uses multiple large-scale population-based datasets to understand complex diseases particularly relationship between cardiovascular risk factors and neurodegenerative diseases (e.g., types of dementia), as well as the association sleep disturbances and various health consequences, in mid-later life. She has a particular interest in exploiting genetic data and causal inference methods (e.g., Mendelian randomization, target trial emulation, etc). Vicky is also passionate about outreach work, public engagement and mentoring young people. She has been a STEM Ambassador since 2019 and has mentored several young people over the years, many of whom are now pursuing scientific careers.

Kathleen Gillespie is Professor of Molecular Medicine at the University of Bristol. She leads the Diabetes and Metabolism Research Group who coordinate a series of type 1 diabetes natural history studies including the first study of risk in adults, T1DRA and the long-running Bart’s Oxford family study. The team also operate the Alistair Williams Antibody Facility which specialises in measurement of islet autoantibodies, key predictors of future type 1 diabetes. A growing portfolio of studies include understanding why children with Down Syndrome are at increased risk of type 1 diabetes (DRWF-funded) and the exocrine pancreas in type 1 diabetes. Kathleen is currently Chair of the UK Type 1 Diabetes Research Consortium which brings together researchers across the UK working collaboratively towards improved therapies.

Stephanie Hanna was the 2020 Diabetes Research and Wellness Foundation Professor David Matthews Research Fellows at Cardiff University. She completed her undergraduate degree and PhD in pharmacology at the University of Bath with placements at Novartis and Piramed. Her research interests focus on the immune processes that drive type 1 diabetes and how they can be prevented. She specialises in the cutting-edge technique of single cell RNA sequencing (scRNAseq) to analyse the immune cells involved in type 1 diabetes as they respond to components of the insulin-producing beta cells. She also applies these techniques to examine responses to immunotherapies for type 1 diabetes in clinical trials.

My research is focused upon understanding how diabetic neuropathic pain occurs. Diabetic neuropathic pain is common, with large proportions of individuals living with diabetes suffering from this problem. This will allow us to develop new or refined therapeutic treatments. All individuals experience pain in some form but despite the unpleasant nature of pain, it is beneficial to protect us from injury. However, this protective nature can be lost due to damage to the sensory neurons. This results in long term chronic pain in individuals living with diabetes. To date there is a lack of effective analgesia to deliver therapeutic relief. Primary areas of investigation that I pursue relate to exploring the causative factors associated with the onset of diabetic neuropathic pain allowing for the design of disease tailored pain killers.

Paul is Director of the DRWF Oxford Human Islet Isolation Facility and the Oxford Islet Transplant Programme. He is Professor of Paediatric Surgery at the University of Oxford, a Consultant Paediatric Surgeon, and Clinical Lead for the NHS Thames Valley and Wessex Surgery in ODN. He leads an internationally-recognised research group encompassing bench-to-bedside research, with the ultimate goal of reversing Type 1 diabetes in children. He was Chief Investigator of the ITAD Paediatric Immunotherapy trial and is a PI for the Vertex Stem-Cell Islet Trials. Paul has held key national and international leadership positions. He was Chair of the NHSBT UK Islet Transplant Steering Group and sits on the Board of the European Pancreas and Islet Transplant Association (EPITA) and is a Past-President of the International Pancreas and Islet Transplant Association (IPITA). He sits on several Research Advisory and Editorial Boards. He has been awarded an Honorary Fellowship of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) in recognition of his work.

Tara Lee is a Clinical Research Fellow at the University of East Anglia and Speciality Registrar in Obstetrics and Gynaecology at Norfolk & Norwich University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.  Having qualified in 2012, she completed postgraduate Core Medical Training and is currently training in Obstetrics and Gynaecology in the East of England.  Tara is the 2021 DRWF Sutherland-Earl Clinical Fellow and undertaking a PhD at UEA where her work focusses on type 1 diabetes in pregnancy and the use of diabetes technologies.  As well as her own studies, she is a researcher on the AiDAPT (Automated insulin Delivery Amongst Pregnant women with Type 1 diabetes) and PROTECT (Pregnancy Outcomes using continuous glucose monitoring Technology in pregnant women with Type 2 diabetes) studies.

Prof. David Matthews (MA, DPhil, BM, BCh, FRCP, MD hon causa) trained at the University of Oxford. His interests are teaching, clinical care and research – the latter primarily in Type 2 diabetes, focusing on insulin secretion, resistance, beta-cell failure and mathematical modelling. He has also been part of and led diabetes trials including UKPDS, CANVAS and VERIFY. He co-founded the Oxford Health Alliance and served as a Senior Investigator at the National Institute of Health Research. He chaired several international diabetes guideline committees for the EASD, of which he is past-president. He established the Oxford Centre for Diabetes, Endocrinology, and Metabolism, raising the funding and serving as its first chairman. He has a long-standing link with DRWF. He is currently the Chair of the Trustees of the Oxford Hospitals Charity.

Dr Millership completed his PhD in Cell Biology at Cardiff University in 2012 and his postdoctoral work at the MRC London Institute of Medical Sciences (LMS) in 2020 which centred around epigenetic function of pancreatic beta cells. In February 2020 he was awarded a Wellcome Trust ISSF Springboard Fellowship and joined the Section of Cell Biology and Functional Genomics at the Department of Metabolism, Digestion and Reproduction at Imperial College London. He is also supported by a DRWF project grant, a Society for Endocrinology Early Career Grant and is lead for two modules of the Imperial College MSc Applied Genomics programme. Dr Millership has over 20 peer reviewed publications to date and presents his work at multiple international Diabetes/islet conferences each year. He is also the early career editor of the Journal of Endocrinology and Journal of Molecular Endocrinology, and is a Society for Endocrinology Leadership and Development Programme Awardee (2022-2025).