You quickly get the sense talking to Professor Zoe Wainer that she has journeyed right across the vast geography of medicine through her career.

Early on, during a placement at Flinders University medical school in Adelaide, she became enthralled by cardiothoracic surgery.

“The moment as a medical student I saw a patient go on bypass,” she says. “I saw the heart stop, the surgery occur and then to then put blood back into the heart and for it to start beating again — I was completely mesmerised by that.”

The inaugural director-general of Australia’s Centre for Disease Control, she continues: “As a result, I pursued cardiothoracics quite actively and got onto the training program relatively quickly.”