Professor Colin Dayan MA MBBS, FRCP, PhD

• PhD in Immunology, Charing Cross and Westminster Medical School, University of London 1991
• MBBS with Honours in Pathology and Surgery, Guys’ Hospital Medical School, University of London 1984
• BA Physiological Sciences, University of Oxford – 1981

Professional memberships

• Diabetes UK
• Society for Endocrinology
• British Society for Immunology
• Immunology of Diabetes Society
• British Thyroid Association
• European Thyroid Association
• European Association for the Study of Diabetes
• Association of Physicians of Great Britain and Ireland

Professor Colin Dayan trained in medicine at University College, Oxford, and Guy’s and Charing Cross Hospitals in London, UK before obtaining a PhD in the immunology of Graves’ Disease in the Laboratory of Marc Feldmann.

He then spent a year as an endocrine fellow at the Massachussetts General Hospital in Boston, USA before completing his specialist training in diabetes and endocrinology as a Lecturer in Bristol. In 2010, he was appointed to the Chair of Clinical Diabetes and Metabolism and Head of Section at Cardiff University School of Medicine and in 2020 as part-time Senior Clinical Researcher in the Nuffield Department of Medicine at the University of Oxford.

From 2021-2025 he was Director of the Joint Research Office for Cardiff University and Cardiff and Vale Health Board and he has also served as Secretary and Treasurer of the Association of Physicians of Great Britain and Ireland. In 2026 he was appointed as a 125 Anniversary Chair at the University of Birmingham, UK.

Professor Dayan supervises clinical and basic science PhDs and MDs in Type 1 diabetes and thyroid disease.

Professor Colin Dayan has a long established interest in translational research in the immunopathology of type 1 diabetes promoting progress to “insulin free T1D”.
>300 publications, H -index 78,  > 25,000 citations

He has published first-in-man clinical studies on the development of peptide immunotherapy and the use of nanoparticles in T1D as well as pioneering the use of lymph node and injection site sampling to monitor the response to therapy. Since 2015 he has been a leading member of the UKT1D-Research Consortium which has hosted more than 15 clinical trials in early T1D over 30 sites.

He is currently leading on novel trial designs including the T1D Plus platform across Europe and Australia to rapidly test combinations of therapies. In collaboration with the Critical Path Institute, he led the TOMI consortium of 21 clinical trials to define the relationship between C-peptide preservation and clinical endpoints and build an FDA/EMA approved clinical trial simulation tool. He is now seeking to define novel endpoints in preclinical T1D as part of the EDENT1FI European programme.

Professor Dayan is a committed advocate to finding ways to bring beta cell preservation and delaying the need for insulin therapy into routine clinical practice. In this regard he supported the application for regulatory approval of Tzield to the FDA in 2021 and is working with colleagues to introduce immunotherapy and population screening into the UK.

His research interests in thyroid disease include thyroid autoimmunity, thyroid hormone replacement and bioavailability, genetic epidemiology as applied to population variation in thyroid hormone bioavailability and thyroid eye disease. He was secretary of the European Thyroid Association 2013-2018 and executive committee member of the British Thyroid Association 2018-2022. He is currently a member of EUGOGO, Chair of the UK Thyroid Eye Disease Amsterdam Implementation Group and Chairman of Trustees of the Thyroid Eye Disease Charitable Trust.