Officer of the Order of Canada
Awarded on: 2014-05-08
Invested on: 2015-02-13
For his contributions to carbohydrate chemistry, notably in the development of a pediatric vaccine used internationally to prevent the most common strain of meningitis.
Harold Jennings has made seminal contributions to the development of lifesaving pediatric vaccines. He has worked for five decades as a research scientist at the National Research Council’s Institute for Biological Sciences. In the 1980s, he developed the vaccine now used across North America and Europe to protect children from the most common strain of meningitis. He is also lauded for his innovative development of conjugate vaccine technology. This breakthrough has been widely used to create more effective vaccines for other infectious diseases.