Pierre Smeestersis a paediatrician acting as the head of the paediatric department from the Academic Children’s Hospital Queen Fabiola at the Free University of Brussels (ULB) in Belgium. He is also leading a research group in Microbiology and Infectious Disease at the Free University of Brussels. He has had a broad range of clinical and research experiences in a number of diverse settings including Peru, Brazil, Australia and Belgium. He has been appointed as Honorary Senior Lecturer from the University of Melbourne and Senior Research Fellow from the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute in Australia. Pierre now shares his time between the Children’s Hospital, teaching of paediatrics and microbiology at University and scientific research. His research interests include vaccination, new diagnostic tests and societal issues related to childhood. Pierre’s team has developed new diagnostic tools for pharyngitis and pneumonia. His team has also set up and validated a new typing tool for Streptococcus pyogenes which has been endorsed by the American CDC and is now broadly used for molecular typing and vaccine development.