Leadership

One of Asia’s most respected higher education and health leaders, Professor Leung is known for his commitment to expanding student opportunity, building strong institutions and nurturing impactful innovation. He is the fortieth Dean of Medicine and inaugural Helen and Francis Zimmern Professor in Population Health at the University of Hong Kong, and currently directs the Laboratory of Data Discovery for Health.

His career has straddled academe and public service. Formerly, he was Head of Community Medicine at the University as well as Hong Kong’s first Under Secretary for Food and Health and fifth Director of the Chief Executive’s Office in government.

A specialist in public health medicine by training, Professor Leung is one of the region’s leading epidemiologists and global health exponents. His work has revolved around topics that have major population health impact locally, where Hong Kong is a reliable and unique epidemiologic sentinel for mainland China and the Chinese diaspora, or where it is best placed to address the fundamental science at hand globally.

Professor Cowling is the Professor and Head of the Division of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, School of Public Health at the University of Hong Kong (HKU). He currently leads the programme “AI-Enabled Causal Inference for Disease Control” (Programme 3) at the Laboratory of Data Discovery for Health.

He is responsible for teaching the introductory module in epidemiology on the Master of Public Health curriculum, and is the chairman of the Departmental Research Postgraduate Committee at HKU School of Public Health. He is a co-director of the WHO Collaborating Centre for Infectious Disease Epidemiology and Control at the School.

His primary research focus is in infectious disease epidemiology, and his latest research has focused on the modes of respiratory virus transmission, influenza vaccination effectiveness, and immunity to infections at the individual and population level. He has strong links with China CDC, and the NIGMS-funded Harvard Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics.

Professor Wong is the Head of Department of Pharmacology and Pharmacy, Co-Director of the Centre for Safe Medication Practice and Research, and holder of the Lo Shiu Kwan Kan Po Ling Professorship in Pharmacy at the University of Hong Kong. He currently leads the programme “AI and Pharmaceuticals in Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs)” (Programme 4) at the Laboratory of Data Discovery for Health.

He is also the Co-Director of the Centre for Medication Optimisation Research and Education (CMORE) at University College London (UCL) Hospital and UCL School of Pharmacy. He has advised the Departments of Health in England and Hong Kong, the World Health Organization, the European Medicines Agency, and the pharmaceutical industry. He has over 300 peer-reviewed papers published in prominent journals and was cited among the top 1% of scholars in the Clarivate Analytics’ Essential Science Indicators in five consecutive years between 2015 and 2019.

His expertise is using big data research to investigate safety and optimum use of medications for treatment of various conditions specifically cardiovascular, neurological and psychological conditions. As part of this work, he conducts research at Queen Mary Hospital, Hong Kong to evaluate the safety and effectiveness of medication in patients with these and other illnesses.

Professor Guan is the Director of the State Key Laboratory of Emerging Infectious Diseases, Daniel CK Yu Professor in Virology, Professor: Chair of Emerging Viral Diseases, and Cluster Leader (Influenza and Infections of Public Health Significance) of Division of Public Health Laboratory Sciences at the School of Public Health, The University of Hong Kong. He currently leads the programme “AI-Metagenomic Platform to Identify Emerging Pathogens” (Programme 2) at the Laboratory of Data Discovery for Health.

His research focuses on the ecology, evolution and pathogenesis of influenza and other emerging respiratory viruses. Over the past decade, his research team has made ground-breaking and distinguished contributions to research in virology and to the control of emerging infectious diseases in China and the world.

Beginning in Year 2000, he initiated and organised a systematic influenza surveillance network, in human, swine, poultry and migratory bird populations, in Southern China. The information from this surveillance programme has provided the most comprehensive understanding of the ecology, evolution and dissemination of avian influenza viruses influenza viruses with pandemic potential worldwide.

Professor Wu is a Professor of Division of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, School of Public Health at the University of Hong Kong (HKU), and currently leads the programme “AI-Enhanced Global and Personal Health Protection” (Programme 1) at the Laboratory of Data Discovery for Health.

He specialises in mathematical and statistical modelling of diseases and their interventions. His research aims to develop useful analytics and strategies for disease control and prevention; and to translate his research findings into public health policy and practice for improving global health.

He has worked on COVID-19, seasonal and pandemic influenza, hand-foot-and-mouth diseases, HPV, MERS, yellow fever, cervical cancer, colorectal cancer and breast cancer. He is the director of HKU’s first Massive Open Online Courseware (MOOC) Epidemics which has had more than 16,000 people enrolled since its first launch in 2014. He is the director of the Croucher Summer Course Vaccinology for Public Health and Clinical Practice.

Dr Ho is an Associate Professor in the School of Biomedical Sciences at the University of Hong Kong (HKU), and currently leads the programme “AI-Assisted Scalable Data Analytics for Global Health Protection” (Programme 5) at the Laboratory of Data Discovery for Health. Prior to joining HKU, he was the Head of Bioinformatics and Systems Medicine Laboratory at the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute in Sydney.

His research focuses on developing and applying cutting-edge computational methods for single cell RNA-seq analysis, metagenomics, and digital health. He has over 90 publications, including first or senior papers in leading journals such as Nature, Genome Biology, Nucleic Acids Research and Science Signaling. He is also the Academic Lead of the Bioinformatics Core of the Centre for PanorOmic Sciences (CPOS) at HKU.

His recent research also covers the use of bioinformatics and systems biology approaches to tackle longstanding problems in basic and translational medicine. A range of specific research projects can be developed within the broad theme of scalable big data analytics for healthcare translation.

Dr Lam is an Associate Professor of Division of Public Health Laboratory Sciences, School of Public Health at the University of Hong Kong, and currently leads the programme “AI-Metagenomic Platform to Identify Emerging Pathogens” (Programme 2) at the Laboratory of Data Discovery for Health.

His main research interest is the evolution, epidemiology and ecology of infectious diseases. He uses integrative genomic approach to determine the patterns, drivers and mechanisms of the emergence of pathogens at human-animal interface including influenza viruses and coronaviruses, as well as some bacterial pathogens and their antibiotic resistance emergence.

His research has contributed to important understanding of the origins, evolution and transmission of newly emerging pathogens such as H7N9 influenza (Nature 2013, Nature 2015), MERS coronavirus (EID2013, Science 2016) and COVID-19 coronavirus (Nature 2020). He is also leading the development of several computational methods and tools for the genomic analysis in the research community.