Leading medicinal chemist Prof Margaret Brimble hopes that her success in trail-blazing research will encourage young scientists to pursue careers in this country, rather than heading abroad.
Prof Brimble, who is professor of organic and medicinal chemistry at Auckland University, was showered with scientific honours last year.
In a stellar year, she became a Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit and won three major research awards: the Rutherford, Hector and MacDiarmid medals.
She is only the second woman to have been awarded the Rutherford Medal, the country's top science and technology honour, and no-one else has received all three medals.
Prof Brimble was in Dunedin this week to give the Rutherford Lecture on ''Mastering molecular chess to mine nature's medicine chest'', at the Otago Museum.
In an interview, she joked that it was ''all downhill from now on'' for her career after receiving so many honours last year.
She is director of medicinal chemistry for biopharmaceutical firm Neuren Pharmaceuticals and has recently modified a naturally occurring peptide- a protein fragment- which is found in the brain after traumatic brain injury and helps prevent secondary cell death.
The US Army has invested $US23 million ($NZ27.4 million) in this potential drug, which will soon undergo advanced human clinical trials in the United States.
She has also helped develop a therapeutic vaccine for use in countering melanoma.
The head of a much more strongly-funded commercial drug research grouping in the United Kingdom had earlier laughed at the idea that a small team of university-based scientists could make a compound to counter traumatic brain injury and which would make it to human clinical trials, she said.
Young New Zealand scientists were just as good as their counterparts elsewhere and could help improve their nation's health and economy, she said.
