(St. George, UT) - Dixie State College of Utah has selected alumnus and health research pioneer Dr. Gregory A. Prince to address the Class of 2012 at the College’s 101st-Annual Commencement Exercises on Friday, May 4th, at 10:00AM at the Avenna Center Burns Arena. Dr. Prince will also receive an honorary doctorate degree in Humanities as part of the commencement ceremony.

DSC President Dr. Stephen D. Nadauld said, “We’re very excited about having Dr. Prince speak to our students and share his perspective as someone who loved being at Dixie and took advantage of the wonderful education he received. He’s a perfect model for our students to follow as they graduate. We want our graduates to go out and be as successful as Dr. Prince has been and then return [to Dixie] and give back to the next generation.

“This commencement marks the first one of our second century and Dr. Prince is a product of Dixie State College,” President Nadauld added. “He is one of our own who has gone on to become very successful in a variety of endeavors he has pursued. He is a renowned scientist, writer and philanthropist. He has served as the chairman of our National Advisory Council and he is assisting us as we are plot the strategy for our second century.”

Dr. Prince has deep roots in St. George and Dixie State College. He is of the sixth generation of the Prince family to have lived in the area since George Prince and his family were part of the founding colonists in the early 1860s, and he was of the third generation of the Prince family to attend DSC.

A native of Los Angeles, California, Dr. Prince, who was inducted into DSC’s Hall of Fame in 1999, graduated as class valedictorian from Dixie College in 1967. After serving an LDS Church mission to Brazil, he attended the UCLA School of Dentistry from 1969-73, where he earned his DDS degree and again graduated as valedictorian. He then completed his Ph.D. in Pathology at UCLA in 1975, for which he studied respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), the primary cause of infant pneumonia worldwide.

Prince and his wife, the former JaLynn Rasmussen, relocated to Maryland in 1975, and over a period of the next 15 years at the National Institutes of Health and Johns Hopkins University, Prince and his co-workers developed the thesis that RSV disease could be prevented by administering antiviral antibodies to high-risk infants. His research is documented by his authorship of over 150 scientific papers.

Prince and two pediatricians co-founded Virion Systems, Inc., a biotechnology company that worked with a consortium that included MedImmune, Inc., to develop Synagis®, a monoclonal antibody that is now administered to over a quarter-million high-risk infants throughout the world each year. Synagis® remains the only monoclonal antibody approved by the Food and Drug Administration for the prevention of any infectious disease.

Dr. and Mrs. Prince are the parents of three children: Chandler, a son who will receive his Bachelor’s degree from Dixie State College in May; Lauren, a daughter who is a graduate of Boston University; and Madison, a son who will graduate from a special education program in Maryland in May. Madison is autistic, and Dr. and Mrs. Prince have been national leaders in addressing the needs of adults with autism, including the establishment of the Madison House Autism Foundation (madisonhouseautism.org).

In addition to autism, Dr. Prince carries a passion for higher education. He currently sits on National Advisory Councils of Dixie State College, Utah Valley University, the University of Utah, Montgomery College (Rockville, Md.), Wesley Theological Seminary (Washington, D.C.), and Johns Hopkins University (Baltimore, Md.).