Overview: Dr Maria Hayes is a senior scientific officer at the Teagasc Food Research Centre, Ashtown, Dublin and an Adjunct Professor in the School of Food Science and Environmental Health at TU Dublin. She works on developing new products with health benefits through identification and characterisation of bioactive ingredients from different marine and terrestrial resources. To do this, she uses a combination of different bioassays that she established at Teagasc including those relevant to maintenance of heart health; prevention of type 2 diabetes and mental health issues, prevention of atherosclerosis, inflammation and pain and antimicrobial and prebiotic assessment assays. She has also developed a method to screen for methane mitigating abilities of algae in vitro. E-mail: Maria.Hayes@teagasc.ie

Background: Scientific research in the areas of Natural products chemistry and industrial microbiology/biotechnology and food product development. Interested in the Bio-economy and utilisation of our natural resources to their full potential. h-index: 51; over 115 papers published in international journals, citations: >10,000, editor and contributor to several books on the topic of marine natural product chemistry. Google scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=GeuIEEIAAAAJ&hl=en

Maria has an Honours degree in Science (Industrial Microbiology and Chemistry) from University College Dublin (UCD) and a PhD in Microbiology and chemistry from University College Cork (UCC). She has a Post-Graduate qualification in Leadership and Development from the Institute of Managers (IMI), Dublin & UCC, Ireland and a Diploma in regulatory affairs from the University of Birmingham and UU.  She joined Teagasc as a researcher on the Marine Functional Foods Research Initiative – NutraMara project in 2008 and has been interested in utilisation of marine resources ever since. She is an academic collaborator of the SFI funded Bio-economy research centre (BiORBIC – https://www.sfi.ie/sfi-research-centres/Biorbic/ ). Maria has previous project management experience (NutraMara) and has worked extensively with the marine sector since 2008. She is the current coordinator and PI of several EU projects including Seasolutions https://seasolutions.ie/ and a PI participant in the EU funded projects Algae4IBD, IDEA and IDEA plus as well as nationally funded projects like U-Protein.