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. 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.
Professor Dame Stephanie Amiel, Emeritus Professor of Diabetes Research (FoLSM), King’s College London
31 December 2024
Emeritus Professor Stephanie Amiel receives Damehood in King's New Year Honours
Professor Dame Stephanie Amiel, Emeritus Professor of Diabetes Research at King’s College London, has received a Damehood for services to people living with Diabetes.
Professor Dame Stephanie Amiel, based in the Faculty of Life Sciences & Medicine, was pivotal in developing the Dose Adjustment for Normal Eating (DAFNE) patient education programme, reducing diabetes emergencies and cost of emergency care by more than 60% leading to a cost-effective standard of care has across the UK, Ireland and internationally.
She introduced islet transplantation to the NHS to treat those with type 1 diabetes and severe hypoglycaemia making King’s College Hospital the first centre in the UK successfully transplanting a patient in the national programme. Her leadership of the diabetes centre at King’s College Hospital has made it an internationally recognised centre of excellence, including a focus on the interaction between mental and physical health in diabetes.
Professor Dame Stephanie’s work on the impact of ethnicity has illuminated aspects of diabetes care in minority groups, with a focus on African and Caribbean communities in London. She has chaired the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) type 1 diabetes guideline development group shaping the current delivery of diabetes care in the 21st century.
In 2021, Professor Dame Stephanie, received the Diabetes UK Robert Turner Award for Research Impact to honour her significant role in revolutionising our understanding of hypoglycaemia – known as low blood sugar – and the delivery of structured diabetes education.
Professor Dame Stephanie is also a founding member of the International Hypoglycaemia Study Group, which first set out the now widely adopted definitions of hypoglycaemia in diabetes. She has worked with Diabetes UK, chairing its Strategic Research Advisory group for some years; with the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (now Breakthrough T1D) and was part of the EU IMI HypoRESOLVE, seeking to define hypoglycaemia in terms of its impact on patients' lives. She is now working on CLEAR, a multicentre study of the impact of new technologies on hypoglycaemia in diabetes, funded by the US National Institutes of Health.
Supporting early career Diabetes researchers, Professor Dame Stephanie has been a mentor on the European Federation for the Study of Diabetes (EFSD) research mentorship programme and sat on its panel.
On behalf of the entire King’s community, I extend our warmest congratulations to Professor Dame Stephanie for this honour, which recognises her years of commitment to research that supports those living with Diabetes.
Professor Shitij Kapur, Vice-Chancellor & President of King's College London
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Professor of Diabetes Research