An internationally known Canadian medical scientist, leader and educator, Dr. Henry Friesen is the visionary who conceived of CIHR and worked with the health research community to bring the vision to fruition. He is currently Chair of the Gairdner Foundation Board of Directors.

Dr. Friesen obtained his medical degree from the University of Manitoba in 1958. He became a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1966. Until 1992, when he was appointed President of the Medical Research Council, Dr. Friesen was Professor and Head of the Department of Physiology and Professor of Medicine at the University of Manitoba. A specialist in endocrinology, Dr. Friesen is widely known for directing research and clinical trials into the effectiveness of using human growth hormone (HGH) to stimulate the growth of very small children. He also discovered the human hormone prolactin and developed a simple blood test to identify patients with excessive amounts of the hormone. Thanks to his research, many thousands of women and men with reproductive disorders related to prolactin have become parents.

Among his many honours are the Gairdner Foundation International Award (1977) and the Wightman Award (2001) and the Izaak Walton Killam Memorial Scholarship. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and was named an Officer of the Order of Canada in 1987 and promoted to Companion of the Order in 2001. In 1993 he was elected a Foreign Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences (USA). In 2000, Dr. Friesen was named the first Chair of Genome Canada.