Dr Cao has been a full-time senior lecturer in the Department of Computer Science and Information Technology. Dr Cao is an active researcher in the evolutionary fields of computer science, data engineering and information systems such as Data Quality, Big Data Analytics, Cloud Computing, Recommendation Systems, Query Mining, Data Security, Privacy Protection, Reliable Queries in Uncertain Databases, Top-k Query Ranking and Decision Supporting Systems. She has successfully supervised 6 PhD graduates who have been employed by universities in Australian and overseas. Many of her Honours and Master graduates have been employed by top industries such as Oracle, Unisys, Computer Sciences Corporation, National Australia Bank and Commonwealth bank, etc.

Dr Cao has published over 90 research papers in international conferences and journals such as IEEE Trans. on Distributed and Parallel Processing, IEEE Trans. on Knowledge and Data Engineering, Journal of Computer and System Sciences, The Computer Journal and top conferences such as WWW, WISE, CAiSE and DASFAA.

Dr Cao has been serving continually for professional research communities. She has served a number of International journals, and international conferences as the reviewer and the PC member. Dr Cao was a Guest Editor for Special Issue "Multimedia Data Applications in Wireless sensor networks" of International Journal of Sensor Networks in 2011. She has been the thesis examiner of PhD and research Masters in many universities of Australia in past 15 years.