Dr Anna L Gloyn joined the faculty at Stanford University in February 2020 as Professor of Pediatrics & Genetics.   She completed her DPhil at the University of Oxford under the supervision of the late Professor Robert C. Turner, followed by post-doctoral training with Professors Andrew Hattersley & Sian Ellard (University of Exeter, UK) and Professor Franz Matschinsky (University of Pennsylvania, USA). Her DPhil and post-doctoral research were both focused on the role of genetic variation in the genes encoding the KATP channel initially in type 2 diabetes and subsequently in neonatal diabetes.  

Her early independent work focused on the clinical and functional characterization of glucokinase mutations in monogenic forms of hyperinsulinemia of infancy, hyperglycemia and neonatal diabetes.  Dr Gloyn maintains an active research program in monogenic forms of diabetes and how genetics can be used to assist diabetes diagnosis and treatment.  Her lab has expertise in variant characterization for multiple genes involved in monogenic diabetes and she supports clinicians with the interpretation of variants of unknown significance from genetic testing.  A major focus of her current work is focused on how deep mutational scanning and maps of variant effects for diabetes relevant genes can be incorporated into guidelines for variant interpretation for monogenic diabetes through her involvement in the Clin Gen Monogenic Diabetes Variant Expert Review Panel and the Atlas of Variant Effects (AVE) consortium.  Recently she has co-led the working group on Precision Diagnostics in monogenic diabetes for the and the ADA/EASD Precision Medicines Initiative which has uncovered a number of gaps in our knowledge. 

Dr Gloyn’s research is not limited to monogenic forms of diabetes she is also an active member of multiple international consortia for genetic discovery for type 2 diabetes including the Accelerated Medicines Partnership for Common Metabolic Disease (AMP-CMD) where she uses her expertise in islet biology, functional genomics and cell and molecular physiology to bridge the gap between genetic discovery and biological and clinical insight.  One of her areas of interest is in how genetics can be used for stratified medicine.    Dr Gloyn is involved in several efforts to integrate genetic data on diabetes heterogeneity into human islet research within the Human Islet Research Network (HIRN).  She is currently responsible for the genetic characterization of human islet donors for both the Integrated Islet Distribution Program (IIDP) where she heads the Human Genotyping Initiative (HIGI) and the Human Pancreas Atlas Program (HPAP) where she is responsible for the genotyping all donors.  She has developed tools and methods to make genetic data available to islet users on ancestry and genetic risk for type 1 and type 2 diabetes.  Dr Gloyn has recieved international recognition for her work from Diabetes UK (DUK) with the RD Lawrence Award Lecture (2009) and the Dorothy Hodgkin Award Lecture (2019), the European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EASD) with the Rising Star Award (2005) and the Minkowski Prize (2014) and from the American Diabetes Association (ADA) with the Outstanding Scientific Achievement Award (2022).