Frances Ashcroft

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. Her work with Professor Andrew Hattersley has helped enable children born with diabetes to switch from insulin injections to tablet therapy.

After attending Talbot Heath School Ashcroft gained a degree in Natural Sciences, and then a PhD in zoology from Cambridge in 1978. Ashcroft then did post-doctoral research at the University of Leicester and the University of California at Los Angeles.

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.