Professor Stephanie Amiel receives damehood for services to people with diabetes

An experimental medicine researcher and a clinical diabetes physician has been recognised in the 2025 New Year’s Honours list.

Professor Stephanie Amiel, Emeritus Professor of Diabetes Research at King’s College London, has received a damehood for her trailblazing work in diabetes research and its transformative impact on the lives of people with diabetes.

Her life-changing research reshaped diabetes care by developing diabetes education courses, making transplants of donor insulin-making cells possible, and revolutionising our understanding of hypoglycaemia.

She has been a dedicated supporter of Diabetes UK and its research, serving on its Research Committee and chairing its Science and Research Advisory Group for many years.

Her guidance has helped set the direction of Diabetes UK’s research and ensure it delivers maximum impact.

Professor Amiel’s remarkable career has been driven by a determination to make living with diabetes less demanding and difficult.

In 2000, with colleagues Prof Simon Heller and Dr Sue Roberts, she created a life-changing education course, Dose Adjustment for Normal Eating (DAFNE), with funding from Diabetes UK.

It helps people with type 1 diabetes learn to adjust their insulin doses depending on what they eat and the many other factors that can affect blood sugar levels, empowering them to confidently self-manage their condition.

By 2023, almost 60,000 people with type 1 diabetes in the UK had completed a DAFNE course, resulting in fewer blood sugar highs and lows and a better quality of life.

In 2005, Diabetes UK then funded Professor Amiel and a team at King’s College London to carry out the UK’s first ever islet transplants.

Islet transplants involve taking clusters of insulin-making beta cells, called islets, from a donor pancreas and transplanting them into someone with type 1 diabetes.

By 2008, thanks to Professor Amiel’s pioneering work and leadership, islet transplants became available on the NHS to people with type 1 diabetes with hypo unawareness and who experience severe hypos.

They can be life-saving and provide powerful benefits – allowing people to temporarily make enough of their own insulin to reduce or stop insulin therapy, have stabler blood sugar levels, fewer severe hypos, and regain hypo awareness.

Professor Amiel’s groundbreaking research has also changed the way we think about and treat hypos.

This includes work to understand the biological mechanisms that drive low blood sugar levels, the impact hypos have on the lives of people with diabetes and their families and uncovering new ways to tackle them.

In 1994, Professor Amiel showed that hypo awareness can be restored by avoiding hypos for a period.

This offered – for the first time – a way for people to regain their ability to detect the signs of low blood sugars and reduce their risk of life-threatening severe hypos.

Along the way, Professor Amiel has also used techniques she developed to study hypos to look at other issues in diabetes, like the impact of insulin resistance and obesity on appetite, how ethnicity impacts type 2 diabetes, diabetes in pregnancy, and the relationship between physical and mental health in people with diabetes.

Professor Amiel said: “This honour has come as a complete surprise to me – of course I am delighted.

“So much of what I have been able to achieve has been in collaboration with amazing colleagues and this award honours them too. One of the great joys of an academic career lies in the truly extraordinary people you meet. But to receive the honour for services to people with diabetes is at once heartwarming and humbling.”

She added: “They are the true heroes in the diabetes story and if I have been able to make things a little better for some of them, that is an honour indeed.”

Anna Morris, Assistant Director of Research at Diabetes UK, said: “Professor Amiel’s Damehood is a testament to her tireless commitment to improving the lives of people with diabetes.

“Her extraordinary research contributions have transformed the landscape of diabetes care, bringing real change to so many.”

She concluded: “Her leadership and expertise have also played a pivotal role in guiding and strengthening our research at Diabetes UK.

“We extend our heartfelt congratulations to Dame Stephanie on this well-deserved recognition and thank her for years of unwavering dedication.”