Professor Mark Tomlinson is a clinical psychologist by training and is currently the Co-Director of the Institute for Life Course Health Research in the Department of Global Health at Stellenbosch University. He is also Professor of Maternal and Child Health in the School of Nursing and Midwifery, Queens University, Belfast, UK.  His scholarly work has involved a diverse range of topics such as improving early childhood development, mental health, adolescent health, and on life course approaches to build human capital in the first two decades of life. He has been a consultant for the World Health Organization, USAID, World Bank, and Conrad N Hilton Foundation.  He was one of the co-ordinating writers of the World Health Organization document – “Nurturing Care for Early Childhood Development”. He was elected as a member of the Academy of Science in South Africa in 2017.  He received the Chancellors Award for Research at Stellenbosch University in 2015. In 2024 he was awarded a Gold Scientific Achievement Award from the South African Medical Research Council. These are awarded to established senior scientists who have made seminal scientific contributions that have impacted on the health of people. He has published over 390 papers in peer-reviewed journals, edited four books and published numerous chapters. He has an H-index of 83; an i-10 index of 304; and 27525 citations (google scholar).  He is on the Editorial Board of PLoS Medicine; and is also on the Editorial Board of Psychology, Health and Medicine.