Dec 27, 2022
Meet the Founders - Sam Scott
From Research to Pro Sport to Start-Up. For the last 7 years, Sam Scott has dedicated his time to researching exercise and type 1 diabetes both in an academic setting and with professional athletes. In this article we provide a background to our team’s Chief Scientific Officer and the journey that brought him to co-found enhance-d.
Originally from the UK, Sam completed his PhD in exercise metabolism at Liverpool John Moores University before moving to Toronto to undertake postdoctoral research in the area of type 1 diabetes and exercise. After a year in Canada, Sam moved to Bern, Switzerland to continue his research on investigating novel strategies to reduce the risk of hypoglycaemia during and after exercise in people with type 1 diabetes.
Alongside his university research, for the last 4 years, Sam has been the Head of Research for Team Novo Nordisk, the professional cycling team consisting of athletes with type 1 diabetes. In this role with TNN, he leads and coordinates all research activities related to the team. The unique insights he has gained from conducting clinical studies and the applied research with professional athletes was the inspiration for creating a solution to assist in data management for people living with diabetes.
“During my PhD I conducted three large exercise training studies and have been a part of many other projects since then. This gave me a lot of time to talk with the people taking part in the studies and to gain a bit of insight into how challenging exercise could be and at the same time how important it is to find solutions to make life easier for people living with diabetes. That’s what drove me to leave the UK and find a way to make an impact.”
The Importance of Community
At the beginning of his doctoral work in Liverpool, Sam initially found it pretty difficult to recruit participants for his projects. He would spend a lot of time in endocrinology clinics, approaching people to participate in his research. Over time, as he got to know more people with type 1 diabetes in Liverpool a community started to form and this led to the establishment of a support group called LIVT1D. This support group is still one of the largest of its kind in the UK, with around 350 members in the Liverpool area.
“The more time I spent with people with type 1 diabetes both inside and outside the lab the more passionate I became about research in this area. The friends I made during this time were a big motivator towards heading to Toronto after my PhD to focus even more on type 1 diabetes and exercise.”
