Andrew Macnab is a Professor in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of British Columbia (UBC), Vancouver, BC, Canada, and the head of the Near Infrared Study (NIRS) Group at the UBC Hospital. He received his MB, BS and MD by research thesis at University College Hospital, London UK. He is a respected clinician and an award-winning researcher with a reputation for innovation and excellence. He was the first scientist in Canada to use NIRS in biomedical applications and has studied the brain, spinal cord, muscle, the liver, and the bladder. He has an honorary fellowship from the Royal College of Pediatrics and Child Health, London, UK, was appointed a Distinguished Scholar at UBC in 2006, is a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences and a has been a Research Fellow at the Stellenbosch Institute of Advanced Study in South Africa since 2008. He is a project director for Rose Charities Canada; this involves oversight of several school-based health promotion programs in Uganda, and was the recipient of Rose Charities international’s 2012 outstanding humanitarian award for his commitment to care for homeless and disenfranchised youth of Uganda.