Professor Andrea B. Maier

Andrea B. Maier, M.D., Ph.D., FRACP is Professor of Gerontology at VU Amsterdam and Professor of Medicine and Healthy Aging and Codirector of the Centre for Healthy Longevity at the National University of Singapore. She is Honorary Professor of Medicine and Aged Care at the University of Melbourne. Her innovative, multidisciplinary @Age research group of biogerontological researchers works in the Netherlands where she is the Chair of @AgeAmsterdam and in Australia, where Andrea is a Chair of @AgeMelbourne. Andrea is working on a long life without chronic diseases.

Andrea’s research focuses on unraveling the mechanisms of aging and age-related diseases.

Since 2013, Andrea has been Full Professor of Aging at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam in Medicine and since 2016 at the Faculty of Human Behavioral, Movement Sciences, and Neuromechanics. In 2016 she was appointed Professor of General Medicine and Aged Care at the University of Melbourne where she has a major leadership role for contributions in clinical and academic leadership, research, and teaching. Between 2016 and 2021, Andrea was Divisional Director of Medicine and Community Care at The Royal Melbourne Hospital. They are Victoria’s second-largest public health service.

In 2018 she was the founder and inaugural chair of the ‘Care of the Ageing’ Network of the Melbourne Academic Centre for Health (MACH), including 20 partner organizations and funded by the National Health and Medical Research Council.

In 2018, she became a Member of the Steering Committee for Aging Hallmark Research Initiative.

The Aging Hallmark Research Initiative draws together research on aging from across the University of Melbourne. It is an interdisciplinary initiative that focuses on technology, design, health, leadership, demography, aging in low and middle-income countries, and social aspects of aging across the life course.

Since 2019, Andrea has been the President-elect and President at the Australian and New Zealand Society for Sarcopenia and Frailty Research (ANZSSFR), a professional, scientific society dedicated to the promotion of clinical, basic, and translational research on sarcopenia and frailty in Australia and New Zealand. Along with deepening the understanding of muscle, bone, and joint disease, their research on sarcopenia, osteoporosis, and their combination, often culminating in disability and frailty, aims to identify, prevent, and treat these conditions with the goal to translate evidence-based research and knowledge into clinical and real-world practice to better support older people in aging well.

In early 2021, Andrea was Visiting Parkway Professor in Geriatrics at the National University of Singapore. Later, she became Oon Chiew Seng Professor in Medicine and Healthy Aging and Codirector of the Centre for Healthy Longevity. By 2030, one in four Singaporeans will be 65 years and above, twice the current ratio. This issue may represent the biggest medical challenge of the 21st century. Andrea and the Centre for Healthy Longevity are integrating research and clinical care, providing a holistic strategy to promote healthy living throughout the aging process, from effective disease prevention in the healthy to novel and compassionate end-of-life care.

During the last 10 years she has conducted multiple international observational studies and intervention trials and has published more than 320 peer-reviewed articles, achieving an H index of 54, spearheading the significant contributions of her highly acclaimed innovative, global, multidisciplinary @Age research group. She is a frequent guest on radio and television programs where she disseminates aging research and is an invited member of several international academic and health policy committees.

Andrea is on the Editorial Board at ICT&Health, Ageing Research Reviews, and Advances in Geriatric Medicine and Research, and is also an International Advisory Board member on the Amsterdam Economic Board.

She is also Associate Editor at the Journal of Cachexia, Sarcopenia, and Muscle and for Frontiers in Aging, and is an invited member of several international academic and health policy committees. She is also a Fellow of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians (FRACP)

Previously she was Board Member at the National Ageing Research Institute in Melbourne, Program Director at the Australian Institute for Musculoskeletal Science (AIMSS), and Inaugural Chair at the Care of The Ageing Network in the Melbourne Academic Centre for Health.

Recently she was appointed member of the Technical Advisory Group (TAG) on Monitoring & Evaluating the UN Decade of Healthy Ageing.

Andrea started researching aging during her medical studies at the Universities of Halle-Wittenberg and Lübeck, where she earned her Magna Cum Laude Doctorate in Medicine in 2003 with her thesis on gerontopsychiatric-medical units. She registered as a specialist in Internal Medicine-Geriatrician at the Leiden University Medical Center in the Netherlands in 2009 where she earned her Doctorate in Medicine with her thesis on Cellular Senescence in 2008.

After her doctorate in Lübeck and her doctorate in 2008 at the University of Leiden, Andrea became head of the geriatric medicine and gerontology section at the VU University Medical Center in 2012. At the age of 33, she was appointed Professor of Internal Medicine, in particular Gerontology. This made her the youngest professor of internal medicine ever in the Netherlands.

In her early years, Andrea went through diverse International Clinical Electives. In 1999, she was at the University of Tartu, specializing in Neurosurgery and Neurology. In 2000, she studied Pulmonology and Traditional Chinese Medicine in Tangshan VR, China. She earned an Erasmus award and did her clinical elective at Rijksuniversiteit Groningen in Geriatric Medicine and Immunology in 2001. She continued with General Surgery at Memorial University of Newfoundland and at the University Medical Center Groningen (UMCG) in 2002 in Internal and Geriatric Medicine.

After her M.D. at Lübeck, she became Resident in Immunology there in 2003 and until 2004, when she became Senior Resident in Internal Medicine for Red Cross Hospital in Den Hague, the Netherlands.

For two years, she was the Primary Investigator on IOP Biomarkers of the Rate of Aging for Unilever and Numico. In 2010, Andrea Founded the Leiden Expert Center for Mobility and Ageing (LEMA).

Between 2008 and 2013, she was Primary and Principal Investigator in Ageing and Locomotion at the Netherlands Consortium for Healthy Ageing and at MYOAGE, a European FP7 program dedicated to understanding and combating age-related muscle weakness. At the same time, she was the Chef de Laboratoire at Leiden University Medical Center until 2013.

Between 2012 and 2016, she was the Head of the Gerontology and Geriatrics section, at the Department of Internal Medicine and Director of External Affairs at Amsterdam Center on Aging.

She was member of the Scientific Committee on Aging and Hematology at the European Hematology Association (EHA) between 2014 and 2018 and Member of Public Tribune at Habion for five years until 2018.

In 2017, Andrea published her non-fiction book, titled Eeuwig Houdbaar (Eternally Sustainable). In the book, she takes the reader into the world of aging. She describes the causes of aging, the state of geriatric medicine, and shows us the scientific developments in this area. She makes it very clear what we have to do with ourselves to rise above the statistics and live to be 120 years old, or much, much older.

Read The muscle-wasting condition ‘sarcopenia’ is now a recognised disease. But we can all protect ourselves, Presenting symptoms of COVID-19 and clinical outcomes in hospitalised older adults, and Do morbidity measures predict the decline of activities of daily living and instrumental activities of daily living amongst older inpatients?

Watch Bringing Geroscience to Clinical Practice and Geroscience and Reverse Ageing.

Listen to Geroscience and Reverse Ageing — Dr. Andrea B. Maier (National University of Singapore).

Read Handgrip strength as a predictor of functional, psychological, and social health. A prospective population-based study among the oldest old and Sarcopenia and its association with falls and fractures in older adults: A systematic review and meta-analysis.

Visit her profiles on LinkedIn, Live Forever Club, Google Scholar, and ResearchGate. Read her Work Profile. Follow her on Facebook, ORCID, Loop, and Twitter. Follow @AgeAmsterdam and @AgeMelbourne.