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Professor Lynette Sadleir joined the Department of Paediatrics and Child Health, University of Otago, Wellington in 1999 following an Epilepsy Fellowship at British Columbia’s Children’s Hospital. In her clinical role as a paediatric epileptologist, she diagnoses and manages children with epilepsy. She is also a physician scientist with expertise in epilepsy phenotyping and epilepsy genetics, and the Director of the Epilepsy Research Group at the University of Otago, Wellington. The Epilepsy Research Group is committed to improving the quality of life for individuals with epilepsy and their families. Her main research focuses on identifying and defining emerging epilepsy syndromes and finding their genetic causes. She is also a member of the International League Against Epilepsy Clinical Genetic Testing in the Epilepsies task force, the SNOMED (Systematized Nomenclature of Medicine) task force, and serves on the Neurological Foundation grant committees. What is the most rewarding part of being a researcher? My research is mainly focused on epilepsy gene discovery. It is fantastic to be able to tell a family who have participated in our research that we have found the cause of epilepsy in their child. Not only do they appreciate finding an answer for their child, but they are thrilled that they have also helped other people who will now be able to have clinical genetic testing to get answers for their family. What has been your most important scientific finding? Your most surprising finding? I was part of a team of researchers that identified mosaic genetic changes in 10% of parents of children with severe epilepsy, who were thought not to have inherited their genetic abnormality from their parent. This has important reproductive implications for families who have children with severe epilepsy. What motivated this and what do you hope to achieve with it? A recent project we completed identified that there are more Māori children with epilepsy than we expected. The aim of this present project that the Neurological Foundation has funded is to find out why that is. Hopefully, the answer to that question will enable us to find a way to decrease the rate of epilepsy in Māori children to the same as non- Māori children. If you had to imagine the world of science 100 years from now, what do you think it would look like? From an epilepsy perspective, children will be screened at birth (or earlier) and potential genetic abnormalities which may cause epilepsy will be corrected with gene therapy preventing the disease altogether and allowing these children to lead normal productive lives. Do you have any words of encouragement or wisdom for those looking towards a career path in science or research? Being an academic physician is extremely difficult. You are paid less and work more hours than your medical colleagues, while having to work in a highly competitive funding environment to be able to finance your research. You effectively have two employers, your DHB and your university, both with high expectations of you. There is never enough time to get everything done and you will constantly feel overwhelmed. There is no doubt it is a hard slog and I don’t recommend it if you are hoping to have good work life balance! However, the day to day work is varied, interesting and valuable. Knowing you are making a major positive impact on the health of not just the patient in front of you, but also a great number of other people, makes it very rewarding. Being part of research teams that are moving your field forward gives you hope that the patient you are managing with your clinical hat on will have a better outcome in the future. The time and effort you put into clinical medical research will have a great reach. It is imperative to the advancement of medicine that dedicated, smart, focused clinicians become physician scientists. When you’re not busy with your many projects, what do you like doing? Spending time with my husband and son. Headlines 19