Professor Maria Makrides is the Theme Leader for SAHMRI Women and Kids and Deputy Director of SAHMRI. Maria is a National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) Principal Research Fellow and also Professor of Human Nutrition, University of Adelaide.

Maria leads a multi-disciplinary research group of over 40 staff who are highly skilled in conducting and translating nutrition intervention trials involving mothers and babies.

As a research dietitian, Maria is committed to improving the nutrition and health of mothers and their babies through the conduct and translation of high quality research. She is particularly recognised for work investigating the health effects of dietary fatty acids, iron and novel dietary ingredients in the perinatal period. This work has resulted in significant changes in the composition of infant formulae and had an important impact on changing international food laws (Codex Alimentarius), which determine the minimum safe composition of infant foods. More recently Maria was part of an international expert advisory group to comment on the composition of follow-up formulas under review by Codex.

Maria is an elected fellow of the Australian Academy of Science and the Australian Academy of Health and Medical Science. She is also President of the International Society for the Study of Fatty Acids and Lipids. She has over 280 peer reviewed publications including a number in the prestigious journals the Lancet, the New England Journal of Medicine, the Journal of the American Medical Association and the British Medical Journal. She is also co-editor of four books, including the most widely sold textbook in paediatric nutrition that is now translated into Chinese, Spanish and Russian.