It is with great sorrow that Gradian announces the passing of our colleague and friend Rob Dickinson, who died at his home last weekend after a six-month battle with melanoma.

Only a month ago, we learned that Rob was named the winner of the prestigious Robert L. Morris Humanitarian Award in recognition of a lifetime of service in healthcare technology in low-income countries. We were proud to see him honored for his 30 years of dedicated work and the thousands of biomedical engineers, students, and hospital-based technicians for whom Rob was a role model.

Rob has been an important part of the Gradian story since our very early days. For many of our customers, he was the face of Gradian’s technical support and biomedical training. We have a vast repertoire of “Rob Dickinson Stories” that will always live on with the organization: the lengths he went to train a struggling tech; his ingenious field repairs of abandoned equipment in hospitals; racing into the bush to photograph a butterfly; and the jokes and stories that always accompanied a beer at the end of the day. He was a unique, talented and gracious man, and we will miss him.