Rate My Professor Richard Beasley

Professor Richard Beasley is an Adjunct Professor in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Otago, where he teaches in the 5th-year General Medicine and Subspecialties programme and the 6th-year medical student programme. He holds the qualifications MBChB, FRACP, DM(Southampton), FAAAAI, FRCP(London), DSc(Otago) and FFOM(Hon). His interests are in respiratory medicine, with a focus on clinical and epidemiological research. Beasley is the founder and director of the Medical Research Institute of New Zealand (MRINZ), an independent medical research organisation, and serves as a physician at Wellington Regional Hospital. He maintains additional professorial appointments at Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington as Professor of Medicine and at the University of Southampton as Visiting Professor.

Beasley has authored or co-authored more than 700 publications, including multiple high-impact papers in The Lancet addressing asthma prevalence, mortality, treatments and related topics such as the International Study of Asthma and Allergies in Childhood (ISAAC) and studies on fenoterol, paracetamol use in infancy and oxygen therapy in COPD. Among his honours are appointment as a Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit (CNZM) in 2008, election as a Fellow of the Royal Society Te Apārangi in 2015, the Sir Charles Hercus Medal in 2016, the Beaven Medal in 2019 and the Rutherford Medal in 2024. He previously served as Deputy Chair of the Health Research Council of New Zealand (2010–2016) and chairs the Asthma and Respiratory Foundation of New Zealand adolescent and adult asthma guidelines group.