Professor Liesl Zühlke graduated from UCT Medical School and then qualified as a Paediatrician at the Red Cross War Memorial Children's Hospital in Cape Town. She trained as a Paediatric Cardiologist in Cape Town and Dusseldorf, Germany. Her particular research interest is Rheumatic Heart Disease and echocardiographic screening in asymptomatic schoolchildren.

She feels passionately that Rheumatic Heart Disease, a preventable chronic disease of childhood, can be controlled in developing countries using a multi-pronged approach. She recently graduated with her Master's in Public Health and is currently a Doctoral Fellow within the ASAP programme. She was a member of the local organizing committee of the 6th World Congress of Paediatric Cardiology and Cardiac Surgery in Cape Town in 2013. She is married to Alexander, a plastic surgeon and they are proud parents of two wonderful boys, Gabriel and Eli.