20 May 2015
The announcement that our Director Graham Le Gros was to be made a companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to science and medicine was made in Last Junes Queens Birthday Honours list but the ceremony was yesterday.
Twice a year, the Governor-General holds investiture ceremonies at Government House in Wellington and Government House in Auckland for the people named in the New Year and Queen's Birthday honours lists.
Graham was among the twenty two people honoured for their wide ranging contributions to New Zealand society.
Though many people focus on the contributions to New Zealand society that this group of special Kiwis make we are enormously proud of Grahams internationalist approach. As reported in the Dominion Post last year he hopes to develop vaccines against cancer, asthma, allergies and some common parasites that blight the health of a billion people living in tropical countries.
Only last month Graham published his latest research in the quest to cure the poorest people on the planet of the scourge of hookworm.