Dr Maria Alejandra Pinero de Plaza is a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at Flinders University and the NHMRC CRE in Frailty and Healthy Ageing. She focuses on the design, implementation, and evaluation of knowledge translation interventions concerning health, behaviour, technology and participatory research.

In 2020-21, Dr Pinero de Plaza investigations have been accepted for publication or published in these Q1 journals:

• Health Promotion International
• Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services
• The International Journal of Qualitative Methods, and
• The Journal of Clinical Nursing

The most prestigious journals within a subject area are those occupying the first quartile, Q1. She also won the 2021 Consumer Health Forum video competition: ‘Big Ideas’ to improve the Australian health care system and has secured prestigious grant funding for most of her projects.

She brings a multidisciplinary background in health promotion, behaviour, and health. Her PhD investigated ways of mapping out healthy and unhealthy dietary patterns for global but targeted health interventions. In the field of marketing science, she investigated computerised ways of evaluating consumers' behaviours and their memory accuracy concerning brand recognition and product design.

As an Associate Investigator, she was recently awarded an NHMRC Partnership Grant of $1.2 million, in which she is contributing to the end user's engagements and KT aspects of RAPIDX AI. As a Chief Investigator, she has been awarded 2 Grants: 1. Concerning the marginalization of Frail, Homebound and Bedridden people in Australia; 2. About COVID-19 and the use of Digital Technologies within inpatients settings to improve the patient-clinician relationship. Recently, she has been co-creating a new Arts in Health certification and an Alliance across Colleges.