Meghan B. Azad

Dr. Azad is a Professor of Pediatrics and Child Health at the University of Manitoba, where she holds a Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Early Nutrition and the Developmental Origins of Health and Disease. Her research program is focused on the role of infant nutrition and the microbiome in child growth, development and resilience. Dr. Azad Directs the Manitoba Interdisciplinary Lactation Centre (MILC) and leads the International Milk Composition (IMiC) Consortium. She serves as Knowledge Mobilization Chair of the CHILD Cohort Study, a national pregnancy cohort following 3500 children to understand how early life experiences shape lifelong health. Research in the THRiVE Discovery Lab is funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the US National Institutes of Health, the Canada Foundation for Innovation, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Dr. Azad has previously served on the International Society for Research in Human Milk and Lactation Executive Council and currently serves on the Advisory Board to the Canadian Breastfeeding Research Network. She also serves on the joint US/Canada Human Milk Composition Initiative. Dr. Azad is a Fellow of the CIFAR Humans and the Microbiome Program and an elected member of the Royal Society of Canada College of New Scholars. She received the International Society for Research in Human Milk and Lactation Erlich-Koldovsky Early Career Investigator Award (2018) and the International Human Milk Genomics Mid-Career Investigator Award (2020). She was named among the WXN Canada Top 100 Most Powerful Women (2020) and Canada’s Top 40 Under 40 (2021), and is a recipient of the prestigious Steacie Award for Research in the Natural Sciences (2023) and Gairdner Momentum Award (2024).