Associate Professor Mark Vickers is based at the Liggins Institute and Gravida: National Centre for Growth and Development at The University of Auckland. Dr Vickers’ research focus is on the effect of alterations in early life nutrition on the health and wellbeing offspring with a particular focus on the development of obesity and the metabolic syndrome. Dr Vickers has established a number of small animal models utilising the paradigm of altered early-life nutrition to examine the mechanistic basis of developmental programming. He also investigates the potential for reversibility of developmental programming via both nutritional and pharmacologic interventions and was the first to show that programming was potentially reversible with interventions in the early life period. Dr Vickers has published over 75 peer-reviewed papers and 6 book chapters in the field of early life origins of adult disease and is on the Editorial Board of a number of journals in this area.