Camilia (“Cami”) R. Martin, MD, MS, is the Chief Scientific Officer of the Charles H. Hood Foundation and a Professor of Pediatrics at Weill Cornell Medicine. She is a nationally and internationally recognized leader in neonatal nutrition and metabolism, whose work has shaped scientific understanding and clinical practice in the care of extremely preterm infants. Her research program spans basic, translational, and clinical investigation, with a unifying focus on how early nutritional exposures influence organ development, growth trajectories, and lifelong health.
Dr. Martin’s scholarly contributions include more than 100 publications, four books, 18 book chapters, and over 180 invited national and international presentations, shaping contemporary neonatal nutritional guidelines and standards of care. Her work is distinguished by its integration of mechanistic discovery with clinical relevance, bridging laboratory insights to bedside application.
Dr. Martin earned her medical degree from Weill Cornell Medical College and completed pediatric residency training at Lurie Children’s Hospital–Northwestern, where she served as Chief Pediatric Resident. She pursued fellowship training in Perinatal–Neonatal Medicine through the Harvard Combined Program and obtained a Master of Science in Epidemiology from the Harvard School of Public Health, grounding her career in both rigorous clinical science and population-based investigation.
Supported by funding from the NIH, industry, philanthropy, and state agencies, Dr. Martin has led and participated as Principal Investigator on multicenter cohort studies and clinical trials examining neonatal nutrition, lipid metabolism, growth, and neurodevelopmental outcomes. Her translational research program integrates complementary animal models and human-derived systems to interrogate fatty acids and lipid-derived mediators in organogenesis, including intestinal health, lung development, inflammation, and developmental programming. She currently serves as Co-Principal Investigator on multiple prospective maternal–infant cohort studies of term and preterm infants funded by the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center and the NICHD.
Beyond individual studies, Dr. Martin has played a central role in building a durable scientific infrastructure. She founded the Neonatal Nutrition Collaborative, a multisite initiative capturing comprehensive nutrition data in infants born before 32 weeks’ gestation and is co-Founder and co-Director of the Perinatal Intergenerational Research Institute at Weill Cornell Medicine, which integrates clinical data with longitudinal biospecimen collection across the perinatal lifespan. In 2025, she co-founded the Society for Neonatal Nutrition and Lifelong Health to convene multidisciplinary experts and accelerate evidence-based advances in neonatal nutrition.
Dr. Martin has worked closely with the Hood Foundation for many years, first as a Major Grant Awardee, then as a member and Chair of the Scientific Review Committee, and as an invited speaker for Hood-sponsored scientific events. As Chief Scientific Officer, Dr. Martin will steward and advance the Foundation’s child health research portfolio, overseeing pediatric research awards, serving as a strategic scientific partner and integrative bridge between the Hood Foundation and the Hood Pediatric Innovation Hub, and supporting early-stage biotechnology and innovation efforts focused on improving pediatric health. A central priority will be growing and activating the Hood alumni network while investing deeply in the development of scientists across pediatrics, ensuring a pipeline of child health innovation.