Professor Iris Benzie:
Chair Professor of Biomedical Science, Department of Health Technology and Informatics, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University.
Professor Iris Benzie began her career at Law Hospital Carluke. She gained FIBMS in 1976, was appointed Senior MLSO, and then moved to Pilgrim Hospital, Boston. She completed a Higher Education Teaching Certificate while Senior MLSO at Torbay District Hospital, and in 1982 moved to Hong Kong to become Lecturer in Clinical Chemistry. She obtained her MPhil (Clinical and Pathological Science) from the Chinese University of Hong Kong a Diploma in the Practice of Higher Education from University of Surrey (both 1986), and PhD (Biomedical Science) from University of Ulster (1996), all by part-time study.
Professor Benzie won the University President’s Award for Excellence in Research and Scholarly Activities in 2007, the President’s Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2011, and has won consultancy prizes and international awards for innovation. Her research interests are in biomarkers of antioxidant status and oxidative stress. With Professor JJ Strain of University of Ulster she invented the now widely used ferric reducing/antioxidant power (FRAP) assay for total antioxidant capacity. Professor Benzie is a Member of the Research Grants Council of the Hong Kong University Grants Committee, she has published 140 journal articles and book chapters, and there are more than 10,000 citations to her work in the scientific literature.