Merete Eggesbø studied medicine at Preklinikum Essen and Oslo University. After completing her studies, she worked as a gynaecologist/obstetrician until she got her three children, thereafter she worked for some years as a general practitioner. She got interested in doing research when she became aware of the sharp increase in asthma/allergy among western children and she defended her thesis on this topic in 2001. Then she started her own mother and child study, the HUMIS-NoMIC study in order to enable studies on her hypothesis that chemicals and gut microbiome disruptions could be involved as risk factors for child diseases. The study encompasses 2600 mother-child pairs and they have now been followed for 17 years and the source of many papers the topics ranging from preterm birth, growth retardation, obesity, ADHD, asthma/allergy and autism.

In addition to her position at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health (NIPH), she worked one year for the governmental food authorities, developing teaching material for paediatricians to increase awareness of food allergy and ensure its correct diagnosis. She was appointed consultant to the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) for the use of MoBa material, another study at NIPH, and spent 1,5 years at the Department of Epidemiology of the NIEHS at Research Triangle park, NC, USA. She also spent 3 months in Boulder, Colorado at Rob Knights Lab (he has now moved to UCSD). This has helped her building an active network of international collaborators.

At present she holds a position as senior researcher at the Environmental Exposure and Epidemiology Department of the Norwegian Institute of Public Health (NIPH).