Professor Melissa Davis is a computational biologist with expertise in the analysis of genome-scale molecular networks, systems biology, and knowledge-based modelling, specifically as applied to solid tumour biology. Melissa finished her PhD in 2007. During her PhD, she participated in the ground breaking Functional Annotation of Mouse (FANTOM) projects 2 and 3, which revolutionised understanding of the transcriptional output of the mammalian genome, and she was awarded a Deans Commendation for her PhD thesis arising from this work. Her first post-doctoral appointment was with Prof. Mark Ragan at the University of Queensland (UQ) developing approaches for the use of ontology in modelling molecular interactions and signalling pathways. She then took up an appointment as the Lead Data Modeller with the Queensland Facility for Advanced Bioinformatics (QFAB). Melissa returned to active research as a senior postdoctoral researcher in the Institute for Molecular Bioscience, leading a team in Cancer Network Analysis before moving to the NICTA Victorian Research Laboratory in 2013. In 2014, Melissa was awarded a four year National Breast Cancer Foundation Career Development Fellowship, and took up a position as Senior Research Fellow in Computational Systems Biology at the University of Melbourne, before moving to the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute for Medical Research as a Laboratory Head in 2016. At the start of 2019, Melissa was appointed with Professor Gordon Smyth as Joint Division Head of the Bioinformatics Division at WEHI. In this role she leads a division of around 60 computational researchers across five research groups and a Bioinformatics Consulting Unit, which provides support to scientists at the institute. In 2022 she was recruited as part of the senior leadership team of Australia's newest medical research institute, the South Australian Immunogenomics Cancer Institute, based at the University of Adelaide, where she will establish and lead a program in Computational Systems Biology. Melissa continues to lead a research group within the Bioinformatics Division at WEHI, as well as establishing a group at SAIGENCI in Adelaide.