Professor Flavia Cicuttini is the Head of the Musculoskeletal Unit, Monash University and Head of Rheumatology, Alfred Hospital. She graduated in Medicine from Monash University in 1982, completed a PhD at the University of Melbourne in 1993, and then a MSc (Epidemiology) at University of London in 1995, and DLSHTM at London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in 1996. She holds specialist medical fellowships from the College of Physicians (Rheumatology) and Faculty of Public Health. Her principle research interests are the prevention and treatment of musculoskeletal diseases, in particularly osteoarthritis.

She has made major and significant contributions to the field of osteoarthritis developing the first method for assessing joints in clinical trials of osteoarthritis. She performed the world first clinical trial of osteoarthritis using this method, which is now used internationally in trials to test new treatments for osteoarthritis. Her work has led to new understanding of the causes of osteoarthritis which has led to clinical trials into new treatments. These include testing old drugs for osteoarthritis as well as developing new treatments with Australian and international biotechnology companies. She is ranked 5 of more than 86,000 researchers in the world in the field of osteoarthritis (Web of Science 2020). She has published over 600 peer-reviewed manuscripts, including journal articles and book chapters. She has supervised 20 doctoral students to completion. She sits on the board of Osteoarthritis Research Society International (OARSI) and is currently on the editorial board of a number of journals including Arthritis Research & Therapy and Medical Journal of Australia. She has been on the scientific organising committee for many international conferences and given numerous invited presentations. She currently serves on the Repatriation Medical Authority.

In 2019 she was elected to the Fellow of the Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences in recognition for her work. In 2019, she was recognised in ‘The Altmetric top 100 globally’ for her work that was the 50th most tracked scientific report of 2.7 million globally of any field. She was awarded the 2015 Australian Rheumatology Association President’s award for collaborative research and the 2010 Australian Rheumatology Association Parr prize for best research in the previous 3 years.