Lorena is a leader in influenza virology in Australia and her work contributes to an NHMRC Program devoted to understanding why some individuals or populations experience particularly severe outcomes of influenza. Her translational research skills, learnt from high-level involvement in the Cooperative Research Centre for Vaccine Technology, have led to significant advances in the pursuit of better vaccines and therapeutics for influenza. Her group has also made major discoveries on how the virus evolves by swapping its genes and what may be the consequences of this for human disease during pandemics. Lorena’s international collaborative efforts in influenza have been recognised by the Russian Academy of Science and she is a member of the Global Institution for Collaborative Research and Education in the area of zoonosis control in Hokkaido University, Japan.