Dr Tadataka (Tachi) Yamada, President of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's Global Health Program, will be awarded an honorary degree at the University of Warwick.

Dr Yamada is the third honorary graduand to be associated with Warwick Medical School. In his role at the Gates Foundation he oversees grants totalling over $7 billion directed at applying technology to deal with major health challenges in the developing world including TB, HIV, malaria, malnutrition and maternal and child health.

He was formerly Chairman of Research and Development and was a member of the Board of Directors at GlaxoSmithKline.

Prior to that, he was chairman of the Department of Internal Medicine at the University of Michigan Medical School and Physician-in-Chief at the University of Michigan Medical Center.

His own research is in the field of gastroenterology. He has over 150 publications in this area and is editor of The Textbook of Gastroentology. His studies resulted in key discoveries in the biological activation of peptide hormones, the structure and function of the receptors for the hormones that regulate gastric acid secretion and the regulation of genes involved in the acid secretor process.

He is a past president of the American Gastroenterological Association and the Association of American Physicians, a master of the American College of Physicians, and a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Science in the United States and the Academy of Medical Sciences in the United Kingdom.

On 19 September 2007 Yamada was named Knight Commander of the British Empire.