Sarah Richardson is an Associate Professor in Cellular Biomedicine at the University of Exeter Medical School with a passionate interest in Type 1 diabetes. She has been awarded three prestigious Fellowships from the Wellcome Trust, the Diabetes Research Wellness Foundation and more recently the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF) 5 year Career Development Award. She was the first recipient of the network of Pancreatic Organ Donors (nPOD) Junior Investigator Award, awarded for dedication to type 1 diabetes research and being a champion of collaborative spirit and data sharing.  She co-leads the Islet Biology Exeter (IBEx) group with Professor Noel Morgan and currently has nearly £2 million in funding (£1.24 million as PI). Her research utilises three unique cohorts of type 1 diabetes patient pancreas samples and is centred around developing a clearer understanding of the disease processes by which beta cells are targeted and destroyed. She has particular interests in the role that enteroviruses and anti-viral responses may play in the disease and how age at diagnosis may impact on diabetes endotypes. She curates the Exeter Archival Diabetes Biobank (which contains the largest and rarest collection of recent-onset Type 1 diabetes pancreata in the world) and is a member of the Tissue Prioritisation Committee for the US based network of Pancreatic Organ Donors with Diabetes (nPOD). 

Sarah has been an Innovators in Diabetes (iDia) participant with Diabetes UK (competitively awarded), and was recently appointed to the Diabetes UK Clinical Studies Group (CSG1 – Causes of Diabetes), the JDRF UK Scientific Advisory Council and the JDRF Viral Vaccine Discussion Group. She is an enthusiastic and pro-active member of several international consortiums and has a real passion for Team Science.