Cassandra Szoeke

Professor Cassandra Szoeke is a Full Academic Professor, Clinician, Speaker and Author. As Principal Investigator of the Women’s Healthy Ageing Project, the longest study of women’s health in Australia, she authored the book Secrets of Women’s Healthy Ageing, which was highly commended in the Educational Publishing Awards Australia and was the Best-selling title in 100 years of Melbourne University Publishing in the genre of Medicine. She is a general physician, consultant neurologist and multi-award-winning clinical researcher.

She has several hundred published articles in academic journals and several book chapters in medical textbooks.  She has worked in the Commonwealth Science Industry and Research Organisation, Public Hospital system and as non-executive board director for the Department of Health, including holding roles as Chair of Quality & Safety and Chair of Education, Training and Research Committees.

In addition to her medical qualifications and fellowship in the Royal College of Physicians she has a BSc with Honours in Genetics and PhD in Epidemiology, and her postdoctoral studies at Stanford University CA, focused on public health and policy.  Her sabbatical at Oxford University focused on sex-specific medicine. She is an Associate Fellow of the Australian Institute of Digital Health and Graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors.

She is currently Director of the Women’s Healthy Ageing Program in the Monash Centre for Health Research and Translation and has held many significant academic positions and teaching roles for academic institutions and specialist colleges and has successfully graduated more than 60 higher research degree candidates since 2008. 

She has represented Australia on several major international collaborative efforts including the Australian clinical representative role in the world-wide Alzheimer’s Disease Initiative, Clinical lead on the Global burden of Dementia, on the science advisory of the International Women’s Brain Project and inaugural lead of the Asia Pacific node.  She spent more than two decades working in Healthy Ageing at the University of Melbourne including more than a decade as Director of the Healthy Ageing Program at the University of Melbourne. 

She has worked in the public and private health system in clinical, leadership and governance roles as board director appointed by the state health minister. She has contributed to the development of national health policies, has sat on the Council of the Australian Medical Association, was appointed to Medical Panels by the Department of Health (Victoria) and has held Chief Health Advisor roles for the Australian Healthy Ageing Organisation and the National Council of Women.