Professor Francine Marques is an National Health and Medical Research Council Emerging Leader, Viertel Charitable Foundation, and National Heart Foundation Fellow. She leads the Hypertension Research Laboratory at Monash University. She has published more than 120 peer-reviewed papers in top journals such as Nature Reviews Cardiology, Nature Medicine, Nature Cardiovascular Research and Circulation, and has secured $10 million in competitive funding as a principal investigator. She won 28 awards including the 2019 American Heart Association Hypertension Council Goldblatt Award, 2020 High Blood Pressure Research Council of Australia and 2021 International Society of Hypertension Mid-Career Awards, and the 2021 Australian Academy of Science Gottschalk Medal, and was a finalist for 11 awards, including the Eureka Prize Emerging Leader in Science. The purpose of her research team is to build exceptional scientists that help to improve cardiovascular health, using translational approaches to lower blood pressure via the gut microbiome.