Professor Rory McCrimmon

Dean (Teaching and Research)

Medicine Office, School of Medicine

Rory McCrimmon
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Contact

Email

r.mccrimmon@dundee.ac.uk

Phone

+44 (0)1382 383444

Biography

Rory McCrimmon trained at the University of Edinburgh and completed his clinical and speciality training in the South-East of Scotland. In 2002, he joined the faculty at Yale University, USA, to investigate why people with type 1 are very prone to developing low glucose (Hypoglycaemia). He returned to Scotland in 2009 to establish his laboratory at the University of Dundee, where he is currently Dean of Medicine, Professor of Experimental Diabetes and Metabolism and Honorary Consultant. He was awarded the 2015 RD Lawrence Lecture and 2022 Dorothy Hodgkin Lecture by Diabetes UK for his research in Hypoglycaemia, and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.

 

Rory has served on the Editorial Boards of Diabetologia, Diabetes, Diabetes Care and the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism. He has been a panel member for Medical Research Council Population and Systems Medicine Board, Diabetes UK Clinical Studies Group Management Committee; Diabetes UK, Intermediate Clinical Fellowships Panel; Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation Scientific Review Boards PEAK Programme; he is an executive member of the International Hypoglycaemia Study Group and a non-executive member of the NHS Tayside Health Board.

 

He is currently also Lead Clinician for the Scottish Diabetes Research Network (Diabetes | NHS Research Scotland | NHS Research Scotland) which supports the setup and delivery of clinical and epidemiological research across Scotland. Epidemiological research is carried out using SCI-Diabetes (Scottish Care Information - Diabetes), which tracks real-time clinical information on all 300,000 people with type I and type II Diabetes in Scotland. The Diabetes Research Register is directly linked to Sci-Diabetes and has over 16,000 patients who have consented to be part of an electronic database of patients who have agreed to be contacted about research for which they are eligible.

Research

The focus of his translational research programme is to define the fundamental mechanisms by which the brain detects low glucose levels (hypoglycaemia) and how these mechanisms are disrupted in type 1 diabetes in response to repeated episodes of hypoglycaemia. Key findings include, establishing key roles for AMP-activated protein kinase and the ATP-sensitive potassium channel in the detection of hypoglycaemia by the brain, and in establishing that impaired awareness of hypoglycaemia, a clinical condition that affects up to 25% of all people with type 1 diabetes, develops as a result of a specialised form of memory called Habituation. He is also active in clinical trial research and has served as the UK Chief Investigator in a number of multi-centre international clinical trials.

View full research profile and publications

Teaching

Primary teaching experience is in academic mentoring and supervision of clinicians, post-graduates and undergraduate students. In this capacity, I have served as Programme Lead for the Academic Foundation Doctors in the Eastern Deanery, been a member of the Scottish Translational Medicine Training Initiative, and a Medical Research Council Clinical Fellowship Training and Career member Development Awards panel. Also, I have co-written the Chapter on Diabetes in Davidson’s Principles and Practice of Medicine (Editions 22 and 23), a textbook that has been read by over 2 million medical students since its first edition. As Interim Dean I jointly Chair the new ScotGEM post-graduate Entry Medical Programme with David Crossman, Dean of Medicine, St Andrew’s University and will visit Anglia Ruskin University regularly as it starts its new Medical School adopting the Dundee Curriculum.

Media availability

I am available for media commentary on my research.

Contact Corporate Communications for media enquiries.

Areas of expertise

  • Diabetes
  • GP shortages
  • Obesity

Second supervisor

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