Merino is chief of the translational surgical pathology section at the National Cancer Institute.

Born in Valladolid, Spain, in 1950, Maria Merino's parents moved to Venezuela when she was still a young child.

She finished high school at the Merici Academy in Caracas in 1966 and received a doctor of medicine degree from Central University of Venezuela in 1974.

She completed her fellowship in surgical pathology at Yale New Haven Hospital in 1979, the same year that she married physician-scientist Ronald D. Neumann.

[1] Merino is interested in studying precancerous conditions that may lead to the development of invasive cancers.