[6][7] She leads the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children's biophysical repository (the Child Health CheckPoint)[6] 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.

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.

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.

[9] Wake (ORCiD: 0000-0001-7501-9257) has published nearly 400 journal articles including: Randomised and quasi-experimental trials Data resources and cohort research