Maria C. Freire is a Peruvian-American biophysicist who was the president and executive director of the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health (FNIH) from 2012-2021.

Freire works in global health, technology commercialization and intellectual property management, focusing on the discovery, development and access to medical interventions.

[1][2] A native of Lima, Peru,[3] Freire trained at the Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia.

[12] She was a member of the Science Board of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and served as chair from 2013 to 2015;[13] is the chair of the business advisory board of the Institute for Biomedical Research, Barcelona, Spain[14] has served as a member of the Commission on the Global Health Risk Framework for the Future of the National Academy of Medicine and the executive committee of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Solutions Network.

[15] Freire also served as a member of the UN Secretary General High Level Panel on Access to Medicines.