Professor Melissa Wake
Paediatrician and Research Leader
Professor Melissa Wake (MBChB, FRACP, FAHMS, MD, GradDip Obst & Gynae) is a paediatrician, community child health researcher, and Scientific Director of the Generation Victoria (GenV) initiative. Her “population paediatrics” agenda spans common childhood conditions and antecedents of diseases of ageing.
Her goals are to speed up children’s research and to test interventions that change children’s care. Having led numerous community-based randomised trials, her major focus for this triennium is building the GenV and Child Health CheckPoint platforms for generations of researchers.
Awards include the 2009 Australian Health Minister's Prize for Excellence in Health & Medical Research and consecutive NHMRC Excellence Awards (2009-12, 2013-16) as top-ranked Research Fellow in Australia. Melissa’s projects have twice appeared in the NHMRC's annual 'Ten of the Best' publication (2008, 2017).
Successes in research translation include securing the Victorian Infant Hearing Screening Program (VIHSP), which now screens 80,000 babies annually and is springboarding a continuing program of population-based hearing research.
Affiliations
- Scientific Director, GenV, Murdoch Children’s Research Institute
- Group Leader, Prevention Innovation, Centre for Community Child Health, Murdoch Children’s Research Institute
- Professorial Fellow, Department of Paediatrics, The University of Melbourne
- Honorary Professor, The Liggins Institute, University of Auckland