Paediatrician Melissa Wake is Scientific Director of the GenV initiative, led from the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute, and holds professorial positions at the Universities of Auckland and Melbourne. Her “population paediatrics” research spans common childhood conditions and antecedents of diseases of ageing. She is passionate about enabling more children to take part in more, faster and more impactful research. As well as GenV and community-based randomised trials, Prof Wake leads the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children’s biophysical repository, the Child Health CheckPoint.