Associate Professor Lisa Smithers is always looking for opportunities to make a difference to the health and welfare of children.“I worry about things that get in the way of children reaching their full potential, whether that be physical health or development. If we can identify the impediments to children’s development, then we can design and test interventions that directly change or buffer the effects on development.”Separating out hype from science is another one of her interests. “Often scientists, me included, fall in love with our favourite theories and use the best available evidence to support it. In our group, we often try to throw everything at a hypothesis before deciding whether the results support the theory. When we can, we use methods that deal with potential biases in results, from the basics such as imputation to address missing information, through to designing studies that incorporate assessments of bias such as negative control studies or more sophisticated methods such as quantitative bias assessments.”