When you look back on your research career and advances that you've made, are there scientific discoveries that were most unexpected or most impactful that you could talk about?

For me, one of the most exciting discoveries was a discovery which came into being because I didn't listen to my supervisor.

And my supervisor was Keith Klugman, who's based in the U.S. now.

He works at the Gates Foundation.

And when he offered me this opportunity of being the lead on the Phase 3 pneumococcal vaccine trial, I went to him and I said, what I would also be interested in as a pediatrician was to investigate these children for respiratory viruses.

to see what road respiratory viruses had in terms of their contribution to children being hospitalized for pneumonia.

And Keith Krugman, being a microbiologist, thought I was wasting my time, couldn't understand, in a study where we're looking at how a pneumococcal vaccine protects against pneumonia, why we should bother looking for respiratory viruses.

As we recognize the challenges we face today, both in the U.S. and globally, what do you see as the greatest threats and the greatest opportunities in infectious diseases over these next coming decades?