I am a PhD candidate and Research Fellow with the Masters of Applied Epidemiology (MAE) Program at the National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health (NCEPH). With a knack for finding hard problems to solve and more than a decade as an applied epidemiologist across Australia, Asia, Africa, South America and the Pacific, my PhD research now sits at the intersection of public health practice, measurement science, and professional identity. It explores how we methodically define the work epidemiologists do, where they fit in the larger public health system, and how we build the evidence base to plan for the workforce we will need next time a pandemic arrives.