MS Research champion gets Queens Birthday honors

Dr Thomas Miller, who helped the New Zealand Multiple Sclerosis Society establish its research programme, has been made a Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit.

Dr Miller has contributed to medical research for 60 years and has published more than 140 peer reviewed papers. He played a key role in the 1960s in the development of the research platform required to establish a School of Medicine in Auckland, focusing on kidney disease, specifically pyelonephritis.
His studies of the disease over 30 years were published in many top ranked medical journals and led to overseas collaborations. He joined the University of Auckland in 1994, where he is now Emeritus Research Fellow in the Department of Medicine.
From 1994 to 2001 he was Scientific Secretary to the Neurological Foundation of New Zealand, during which time he overhauled the grant processing procedures to reflect a more open and fair peer-review process. His systems are still in use today.
At the same time he also took up a position with the Multiple Sclerosis Society of New Zealand to help them establish a research program. Based on his experience at the Neurological Foundation he sought out research groups with the necessary skills to initiate new lines of MS research. The peer-reviewed projects that were funded can be seen as the start of laboratory based MS research in New Zealand and have grown significantly since.

In the 2000s he focused on the field of infection control and his resulting analysis and publications saw him recognised as a world expert in the field and has resulted in significant change in infection control practice in hospitals around the world.
Dr Miller is currently a member of the Auckland Medical Historical Society.