Emeritus Professor David M. Fergusson

David was the founder of the Christchurch Health and Development Study, an ongoing study of a birth cohort of 1265 children born in the Christchurch region in mid-1977. Research into this cohort has produced over 435 published books, reports, and scientific articles that span a wide range of disciplines including: psychology, psychiatry, epidemiology, paediatrics, health economics, and sociology. In addition, he was a director and evaluator on the Board of the Early Start Project, a Christchurch-based family support programme.

His principal research interests lay in the design analysis and interpretation of correlational data. He was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand and Honorary Fellow of the New Zealand Psychological Society in 2006, and Honorary Fellow of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians in 2007. In 2006, he was awarded the Christchurch School of Medicine Gold Medal for Research Excellence, and in 2010 was awarded the University of Otago Distinguished Research Medal.

Following his retirement from the University of Otago in August 2015, he worked as a consultant for the Ministry of Social Development.