The world has been astonished by the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, which we all hope to see defeated by the application of top-level science of the type promoted by the PREPARE consortium. In this session, we will provide a top-level overview of just what can be achieved in preparing for the next pandemic and just how important it is that we maintain our science base in readiness for future pandemics. We will focus on influenza, a likely cause of future pandemics, but the messages from this session have broad application in relation to other viral outbreaks. We will demonstrate the potential of human challenge studies to discover key facts about the host response to infection, the studies that are being performed to find new treatments both for mild and severe disease and, importantly, how these advances benefit from public engagement and can be made relevant policymaking.