Melissa Helen Little is an Australian scientist and academic who has served as director of Cell Biology at the Murdoch Children's Research Institute since 2019.

[1] She is also a Professor in the Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences, University of Melbourne, and Program Leader of Stem Cells Australia.

[citation needed] Little started her research career studying Wilm's Tumour, a childhood kidney cancer.

She was awarded a Royal Society Endeavour Fellowship to move to the Medical Research Council Human Genetics Unit in Edinburgh to undertake postdoctoral training with Nicholas Hastie.

[7] Her work focuses on the molecular aspects of kidney development, with applications to stem cell biology and regenerative medicine.

Further research into the organoids by Prof Little's Laboratory has demonstrated robust transcriptional reproducibility of the model[10] and utilised induced pluripotent stem cells generated from patients to study their kidney disease.