This is Lewis Fry’s second award from the North Harbour Club. In 2014 he received an AIMES Emerging Talent Award. That award enabled him to take a year away from medicine to complete a BMedSci degree, a highly successful one-year research project into vision loss from glaucoma.

In 2017 the ex-Kristin School pupil and DUX took up a Rhodes Scholarship at The University of Oxford, undertaking a DPhil (PhD) in Clinical Neurosciences. In his words "spending the next three years working on how to use CRISPR (a gene editing technology) to edit DNA to treat incurable blindness”. CRISPR (pronounced ‘crisper’) has changed the game for genetic diseases.
"With this power to alter DNA however, comes a responsibility to use gene-editing technology ethically,” said Lewis in his AIMES Award application. "I plan to use my experience as a doctor, scientist and scholar to become a leader in this rapidly evolving landscape and guide how we use this technology.”
Lewis explained that CRISPR can be used to cut and paste genes precisely. The promise CRISPR offers is that it allows scientists to identify, replace and change the DNA that causes disease. Unlike technologies that have gone before it, CRISPR is cheap, accurate and relatively easy to use.
"Herein lies the need for leadership,” added Lewis. “In a future environment that is challenged by balancing the promise, and also the threat, of progress. I see myself over the next five years as being uniquely positioned to help guide the global and scientific community in how we apply science in an ethical but progressive manner. I hope to bring together my work at the bedside as a doctor, the laboratory bench as a scientist, and use these experiences to develop a philosophical and ethical approach to how to best use these new technologies.”
Lewis Fry has a strong background in academic excellence, leadership and community service. He graduated from Monash University (Melbourne) in the top 1% of Victorian medical students, winning the university prizes for coming first in Surgery, Geriatrics, and Ophthalmology. He worked as a junior doctor at The Alfred Hospital in Melbourne. He has published a number of peer-reviewed scientific papers, with others currently in development. He was the Editor-in-Chief of the Australian Medical Student Journal (AMSJ).
"Today, innovation moves at a pace beyond that of policy and regulation. I hope to harness this to help those with incurable blindness. However in this time of rapidly developing scientific capabilities, we must have leaders that use publicly funded scientific knowledge openly, and in ways that society is comfortable with. This will require global cooperation and global conversation. To this I hope to provide a Kiwi voice."
In addition to his medical studies, Lewis is a tutor, a keen photographer, bushwalker and talented cricketer.
Lewis Fry received the North Harbour Club AIMES Education Award, sponsored by Kristin School and a cash grant of $15,000.