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 Ng is the Co-Investigator of the programme “AI-Enhanced Global and Personal Health Protection” (Programme 1) at the Laboratory of Data Discovery for Health.

He is the Vice President of Tencent Healthcare and is currently leading Tencent’s healthcare business. He first started his career as a medical doctor where he was the chief resident at Middlemore Hospital in Auckland, New Zealand. He then moved to the US to become a strategy consultant with McKinsey & Company where he co-led the Greater China Healthcare Practice. He then joined the Gates Foundation as the deputy director of the China Country Office, responsible for the health and innovation portfolio.

He is also serving as an advisor to WHO’s Digital Health Technical Advisory Group, and an honorary associate professor at the University of Hong Kong’s Faculty of Medicine.

Dr Yom-Tov is the Co-Investigator of the programme “AI-Enhanced Global and Personal Health Protection” (Programme 1) at the Laboratory of Data Discovery for Health.

He is currently the Senior Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research Israel. Before joining Microsoft, he worked with Yahoo Research, IBM Research (where he held the title of Master Inventor), and Rafael. His primary research interests are in applications of information retrieval, large-scale machine learning, and social analysis to health and medicine.

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 Larson is the Co-Principal Investigator of the programme “AI-Enhanced Global and Personal Health Protection” (Programme 1) at the Laboratory of Data Discovery for Health.

She is a Professor of Anthropology, Risk and Decision Science and is the Founding Director of the Vaccine Confidence Project at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. She is also s Clinical Professor of Health Metrics Sciences, University of Washington, Seattle, USA, and a Guest Professor at the University of Antwerp, Belgium. Her research focuses on the analysis of social and political factors that can affect uptake of health interventions and influence policies. Her particular interest is on risk and rumour management from clinical trials to delivery, and building public trust.

Professor Leung is the Co-Investigator of the programme “AI-Enhanced Global and Personal Health Protection” (Programme 1) at the Laboratory of Data Discovery for Health.

Professor Leung is a Assistant Professor in the Division of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, School of Public Health at the University of Hong Kong (HKU). In recent years, her primary research is in mathematical modelling of a wide range of communicable and non-communicable diseases, such as influenza, MERS, hand-foot-and-mouth disease, HPV, cervical cancer, colorectal cancer and breast cancer.

She also conducts epidemiological and economic evaluations of intervention strategies against communicable and non-communicable diseases, such as HFMD vaccination and breast cancer screening programmes. She was the core developer of HKU’s first Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) Epidemics.

Professor Jit is the Co-Investigator of the two programmes namely “AI-Enhanced Global and Personal Health Protection” (Programme 1) and “AI and Pharmaceuticals in Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs)” (Programme 4) at the Laboratory of Data Discovery for Health.

He is a Professor of Vaccine Epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. He also holds a visiting professorship at the School of Public Health at the University of Hong Kong. He works for many years at Public Health England (as well as its predecessor the Health Protection Agency), and continues to collaborate with colleagues there. His recent research focuses on understanding the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic and ways to mitigate it.

Dr Ni is the Co-Investigator of the programme “AI-Enhanced Global and Personal Health Protection” (Programme 1) at the Laboratory of Data Discovery for Health.

He is a Clinical Associate Professor in the Division of Community Medicine and Public Health Practice, School of Public Health at the University of Hong Kong. He is a specialist in public health medicine and has been conferred Fellowships by the Hong Kong Academy of Medicine (Community Medicine), Hong Kong College of Community Medicine, and the United Kingdom’s Faculty of Public Health, and Membership of the Royal College of Physicians.

As a public health physician, his interdisciplinary research spans across different fields while maintaining a focus on population mental health. His primary area of research is in psychiatric epidemiology, and revolves around prevailing and emerging determinants of mental health.

Dr Paterson is the Co-Investigator of the programme “AI-Enhanced Global and Personal Health Protection” (Programme 1) at the Laboratory of Data Discovery for Health.

She is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Infectious Disease Epidemiology and Co-director of The Vaccine Confidence Project (VCR) at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. She has been researching issues of public confidence in immunisations since 2010. Her specific research activities include qualitative analysis of parental reasons for not vaccinating their child with influenza vaccine in England, analysis of concerns surrounding HPV vaccine in India and Japan, and a systematic review on public trust in vaccination.

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.

Dr Horace Choi obtained his PhD from the School of Public Health at The University of Hong Kong. His research interests cover health economics, infectious diseases modelling, effectiveness of cancer treatments and cancer epidemiology. He worked intensively on modelling the infection of human papillomavirus (HPV) and its development to cervical cancer using a dynamic transmission model between females and males. The outcomes linked to the cost-effectiveness analysis (CEA) of HPV vaccination and cervical screening for females in Hong Kong. Dr Choi also conducted various cancer research analyses, with particular foci on nasopharyngeal and gastrointestinal cancers, including multi-center clinical trials, CEAs of targeted therapy and immunotherapy, quality-of-life studies and network meta-analyses.

Dr Hanxiao Kong is a Honorary Post-doctoral Fellow of the programme “AI-Enhanced Global and Personal Health Protection” (Programme 1) at the Laboratory of Data Discovery for Health.

Dr Kong just graduated from Hong Kong Baptist University in communication studies and now will continue engaging in projects about health-related issues such as vaccination hesitancy, mental help-seeking, tobacco use, cancer screening, and traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) adoption. She has majored in communication studies since she was an undergraduate and her study interests range from health communication, social media studies, persuasion as well as information processing. She has published several papers in top journals, and six of her papers got accepted by the International Communication Association (ICA). She used to be a team member in one of the National Philosophy and Social Science Planning Project of PRC.

Additionally, Dr Kong has worked in the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Tencent where she gained first-hand experience on social marketing, social media management, and other practical skills.

Dr Leesa Lin is the Risk Communication and Implementation Science Lead as well as the Asia lead at the Vaccine Confidence Project™. She is a communication and behavioural scientist whose research has centred around the assessment of public health systems’ emergency preparedness, emergency risk communications, global health security, and development and implementation of behavioural change interventions. Dr Lin applies a mixed-methods approach in her research and evaluation activities. A primary focus of her work has been to identify challenges, inequalities, and resilience experienced by at-risk and disadvantaged populations, as well as social and behavioural interventions to improve preparedness outcomes during large-scale public health emergencies such as the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake, 2009/2010 H1N1 pandemic, 2010 Boston Water Crisis, 2013 MERS outbreaks, and the current COVID-19 pandemic.

Dr Lin’s current research focuses on social science response to epidemic outbreaks, vaccine confidence, community preparedness, child health and development, mental health, and antibiotic resistance (AMR). She is currently serving as an expert in the Social Science Research Working Group for the WHO Blueprint for 2019 novel Coronavirus Global R&D Preparedness and for the COVID-19 Clinical Research Coalition.

Knowledge generated from her research has been translated into guidelines and programmes. Dr Lin has an extensive background in knowledge translation and dissemination. In addition to conference presentations and journal publications, Dr Lin has worked on the development of case studies, executive education, workshops and seminars, programme evaluation reports and evaluation tools, and training products for knowledge users.

Dr Lin holds a PhD in Implementation Science, Behavioural and Decision Sciences, and Social Epidemiology from LSHTM (United Kingdom), a ScM in Global Health and Population from the Harvard School of Public Health (United States), and a BA in Psychology and Asian Studies from the University of British Columbia (Canada).

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