"I was privileged enough to be leading a team of fantastic researchers, who made an important contribution to the country, so it's quite humbling to have been recognised with this honour," he said.
Hendy said his team of researchers were under time pressure earlier this year to produce models to advise the government and he is pleased with the outcome.
"In March everything was really uncertain and we had to work really rapidly and a lot of long days to get the models ready. We knew the government would need it to be able to start thinking about relaxing alert levels once elimination has been achieved... that was a special achievement," he said.