Margaret is a Distinguished Professor and Director of Medicinal Chemistry at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. She is an Associate Editor for Organic Letters, Deputy Director of the Maurice Wilkins Centre for Molecular Biodiscovery and Past-President of IUPAC Organic and Biomolecular Division III. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society London, Dame Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit, has been inducted into the American Chemical Society Medicinal Chemistry Hall of Fame. She was awarded the Rutherford, Hector and MacDiarmid medals (Royal Society NZ), 2022 Royal Society of Chemistry Pedler Award for innovation in Organic Chemistry and the 2023 American Chemical Society Ernest Guenther award for Natural Products Chemistry. Her research focusses on the synthesis of novel bioactive natural products/antimicrobial peptides, antibody-drug conjugates, and lipopeptides for cancer vaccines and new biomaterials. She discovered the drug candidate trofinetide (NNZ2566) that was successful in phase 3 clinical trials for Rett Syndrome (Neuren Pharmaceuticals and Acadia Pharmaceuticals; pending FDA approval in 2023) and NNZ2591 (phase 2 clinical trials for 4 rare neurogenetic disorders). She co-founded the cancer immunotherapy company SapVax that licensed her CLipPA peptide lipidation technology to develop self-adjuvanting peptide-based cancer vaccines.