Dame Frances Ashcroft DBE, FRS, FMedSci, is the Royal Society GlaxoSmithKline Research Professor at the University Laboratory of Physiology, Oxford and a Fellow of Trinity College, Oxford.
Earning her BA, PhD, and ScD degrees from Cambridge, she primarily researches on ATP-sensitive potassium channels and how they contribute to insulin secretion. She hopes to uncover how increases in blood glucose trigger the release of insulin from pancreatic beta-cells, the way this fails in type 2 diabetes, and what types of drugs may be able to reverse this flaw.
Aside from writing this book, she has published the novel The Spark of Life: Electricity in the Human Body as well as the textbook Ion Channels and Disease. In addition to being a research professor at Oxford, she also spearheads OXION, a rigorous research program interested in the integration of both physiology and ion channels.
For more information about the author, check out these links:
https://www.dpag.ox.ac.uk/team/frances-ashcroft
https://www.trinity.ox.ac.uk/people/profiles/frances-ashcroft/
https://www.ibiology.org/speakers/frances-ashcroft/