Christine Winterbourn
Professor Christine Winterbourn, of Christchurch, received the Insignia of a Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit, for services to science. Professor Winterbourn is the Director of the Free Radical Research Group in the Pathology Department of the University of Canterbury. A biochemist and world authority on free radicals, she has made seminal discoveries that have had important implications for medical research. She has demonstrated that human cells produce free radicals as part of their normal function, and identified chemical reactions of free radicals that can occur in diseases such as cancer, stroke, and coronary heart disease. She has served on the Marsden Fund Council and the Health Research Council. She has mentored numerous students and young scientists and published more than 260 scientific papers. She has received a number of national and international awards for her research, including the Royal Society of New Zealand’s prestigious Rutherford Medal in 2011, the first woman to receive the award.