Global achiever

Dr Alessandro Demaio, Postdoctoral Fellow in Global Health & NCDs, Harvard Global Equity Initiative, Assistant Professor at the Copenhagen School of Global Health, and a 2003 graduate of Wesley College, spoke to Senior School students at a Glen Waverley campus assembly recently. Alessandro (Sandro) is only 28 years old, but his passport is already well used. The medical professional has worked and studied in countries all over the world including Mongolia, Cambodia, Denmark and the United States.

Following medical studies at Monash University, he worked at The Alfred Hospital in Melbourne. A relocation to Denmark in 2010 enabled Sandro to begin a PhD fellowship in Global Health with the University of Copenhagen, working with the Mongolian Ministry of Health, focusing on Non-Communicable Diseases (NCD). In addition to this research, Sandro lectures at the University of Copenhagen and Charité - Universitätsmedizin, Berlin, as well as The University of Melbourne.

Sandro is a regular contributor to academic and public discourse and 2013 has been a very busy year for him. He co-founded NCDFREE, a global social movement against NCDs – including crowd-funding US$60,000 and has been very involved in the production of three short, advocacy films. He has also been writing a regular column with the online newspaper The Conversation and established and leads the Pubic Library of Science blog Translational Global Health, all whilst being a Fellow at Harvard University.

Sandro is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Harvard Global Equity Initiative at Harvard Medical School and an Assistant Professor at the Copenhagen School of Global Health.

All those at the assembly were delighted and inspired to hear about Sandro’s pathway since he finished the International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme at Wesley College Glen Waverley in 2003.

Wesley College is very proud of Sandro’s achievements and we look forward to following his international medical career with great interest over the coming years.