Melissa Wake

Melissa Anne Wake MBChB MD FRACP FAHMS is a New Zealand paediatrician and scientific director of the Generation Victoria initiative, which states the aim of creating very large, parallel whole-of-state birth and parent cohorts in Victoria, Australia, for Open Science discovery and interventional research. She is group leader of the Murdoch Children's Research Institute's Prevention Innovation Research Group and holds professorial positions with the University of Melbourne and the University of Auckland (the Liggins Institute).

Her "population paediatrics" research spans common childhood conditions and antecedents of diseases of ageing. She leads the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children's biophysical repository (the Child Health CheckPoint) and has led or co-led 20 community-based randomised trials. A major focus is on building large-scale platforms to support faster, better observational and interventional children's research.

Early life and education
Melissa Wake was born in Levin, New Zealand, the youngest of five children. After leaving Woodford House School for Girls in 1976, she graduated in medicine from the University of Otago in 1982, and entered clinical paediatrics in England before formal training in Auckland and Melbourne. Following her research doctorate (1999), she was Director of Research at Melbourne's Centre for Community Child Health and a consultant paediatrician at Melbourne Royal Children's Hospital. In 2017, she took up the Chair in Child Health Research at the University of Auckland, later returning to Melbourne to lead the foundational stages of Generation Victoria.

Awards

 * 2008, 2016 NHMRC "Ten of the Best" publication
 * 2009 Australian Health Minister’s Award for Excellence in Health and Medical Research
 * 2012 National Health and Medical Research Council – Excellence Award – Highest-ranked Research Fellowship

Publications
Wake (ORCiD: 0000-0001-7501-9257) has published nearly 400 journal articles including:

Randomised and quasi-experimental trials
 * Hiscock H, Wake M. Randomised controlled trial of behavioural infant sleep intervention to improve infant sleep and maternal mood. BMJ 2002;324:1062
 * Wake M, Baur L, et al. Outcomes and costs of primary care surveillance and intervention for overweight or obese children: the LEAP 2 randomised controlled trial. BMJ 2009;339(32):b3308
 * Wake M, Tobin S, et al. Outcomes of population based language promotion for slow to talk toddlers at ages 2 and 3 years: Let's Learn Language cluster randomised controlled trial. BMJ 2011;343:d4741.
 * Wake M, Lycett K, et al. Shared care obesity management in 3-10 year old children: 12 month outcomes of HopSCOTCH randomised trial. BMJ 2013;346:f3092
 * Sung V, … Wake M. Treating infant colic with the probiotic Lactobacillus reuteri: Double blind, placebo controlled randomised trial. BMJ 2014;348:g2107
 * Wake M, Ching T, et al. Population outcomes of three approaches to detection of congenital hearing loss. Pediatrics 2016;137(1):e20151722
 * Roberts G, … Wake M. Academic Outcomes 2 Years after working memory training for children with low working memory: A randomized clinical trial. JAMA Pediatrics 2016;170(5):e154568

Data resources and cohort research
 * Wake M, Hesketh K, Lucas J. Teething and tooth eruption in infants: A cohort study. Pediatrics 2000;106:1374-1379
 * Williams J, Wake M, et al. Health-related quality of life of overweight and obese children. JAMA 2005;293(1):70-76
 * Clifford SA, … Wake M. Child Health CheckPoint: Cohort summary of a physical health and biospecimen module for the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children. BMJ Open 2019; 4;9(Suppl 3):3-22
 * Hu Y, Wake M, Saffery R. Clarifying the Sweeping Consequences of COVID-19 in Pregnant Women, Newborns, and Children with Existing Cohorts. JAMA Pediatrics 2021 Feb 1;175(2):117-118
 * Wake M, Goldfeld S, Davidson A. Embedding Life Course Interventions in Longitudinal Cohort Studies: Australia’s GenV Opportunity. Pediatrics 2022 May 1;149(Suppl 5):e2021053509R