Martin Hewison is Professor of Molecular Endocrinology and Director of the Institute of Metabolism and Systems Research (IMSR) at the University of Birmingham. His main research interest is vitamin D and human health, and he has published 280 research papers on skeletal and extra-skeletal actions of vitamin D and other steroid hormones. Prof. Hewison’s group is at the forefront of research linking vitamin D and immune health, with implications for infectious and autoimmune disease, as well as pregnancy. The Hewison group has also pioneered studies of alternative markers of vitamin D ‘status’, including development of novel technology to measure multiple metabolites of vitamin D – the vitamin D metabolome – and analysis of serum vitamin D binding protein as a determinant of vitamin D bioavailability and intracellular actin function. Prof. Hewison’s research has been supported by the Royal Society (Wolfson Fellowship), the Medical Research Council and Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, Diabetes UK, and the National Institutes of Health (USA).