Leadership

One of Asia’s most respected higher education, health and philanthropic leaders, Professor Gabriel Leung is known for his commitment to improving human capabilities, nurturing impactful innovation and building strong institutions. He is the Executive Director (Charities and Community) of the Hong Kong Jockey Club, overseeing its Charities Trust, while serving as a Governor of The Wellcome Trust – both of which are ranked amongst the top ten philanthropies globally. Professor Leung is also the Chief Scientific Officer Emeritus of the Laboratory of Data Discovery for Health (D²4H), and the Honorary Clinical Professor at the School of Public Health, LKS Faculty of Medicine at the University of Hong Kong.

His career has straddled academe, public service, and philanthropy. From 2013 to 2022, he was the longest-serving Dean of Medicine and the inaugural Helen and Francis Zimmern Professor in Population Health at the University of Hong Kong. Formerly, he was Hong Kong’s first Under Secretary for Food and Health and the fifth Director of the Chief Executive’s Office in government.

A specialist in public health medicine by training, Professor Leung is a leading epidemiologist and global health exponent. 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 Leung’s research defined the epidemiology of three novel viral epidemics, namely SARS in 2003, H7N9 influenza in 2013 and most recently COVID-19. As minister, he led Hong Kong government’s response against the 2009 influenza pandemic. He was the founding co-director of HKU’s World Health Organization (WHO) Collaborating Centre for Infectious Disease Epidemiology and Control and founded the D²4H at the Hong Kong Science and Technology Park.

In parallel, Professor Leung led several large-scale longitudinal cohorts (Children of 1997, FAMILY, Department of Health Elderly Health Service cohort), tracking tens of thousands of lives to study the fundamental causes of non-communicable conditions and to explain the health impacts of contemporary social phenomena.

A final strand of his scholarly work concerned the economics and policy issues of health systems. His team was the government’s health accountant and projected health care human resources needs. Regionally, Professor Leung has tirelessly worked to build capacity throughout the Asia Pacific. He served as founding Chair of the Asia Pacific Observatory on Health Systems Policies and continues to lead its Strategic Technical Advisory Committee.

Around the world, Professor Leung regularly advises national and international agencies, including the World Health Organisation, World Bank, Asian Development Bank, Boao Forum for Asia, Institut Pasteur, Japan Center for International Exchange, National Centre for Infectious Diseases of Singapore and China Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. He is an Adjunct Professor of Peking Union Medical College Hospital and Adjunct Professorial Researcher of the China National Health Development Research Center.

Locally, he was Vice President and Censor in Public Health Medicine of the Hong Kong College of Community Medicine, and an elected council member of the Hong Kong Academy of Medicine. He was a member of the Hospital Authority and completed two terms on the University Grants Committee, which are respectively a statutory agency responsible for all public health care services and a government advisory body on the development and funding requirements of the higher education sector.

He co-edited the Journal of Public Health, was inaugural co-editor of Epidemics, associate editor of Health Policy and is founding deputy editor-in-chief of China CDC Weekly. He currently serves on the editorial boards of ten journals, including the British Medical Journal.

After reading medicine at the University of Western Ontario, Professor Leung completed family medicine residency training in Toronto. He earned a master’s from Harvard University and research doctorate from HKU.

He is an elected member of the US National Academy of Medicine and was awarded the Gold Bauhinia Star (second highest civilian honour) by the Hong Kong government for distinguished service in protecting and promoting population health.

Professor Joseph Wu is the Managing Director of the Laboratory of Data Discovery for Health (D²4H), and Professor at the School of Public Health of the LKS Faculty of Medicine of the University of Hong Kong. Professor Wu specialises in mathematical and statistical modelling of diseases. His research aims are: (i) to develop practical analytics and strategies for disease control and prevention; and (ii) to translate his research into policies and practice. 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 earned his PhD (Operations Research) and BS (Chemical Engineering) from MIT.

Professor Wu is the director of: (i) HKU’s first Massive Open Online Courseware (MOOC) Epidemics which has had more than 50,000 people enrolled since its first launch in 2014; and (ii) the Croucher Summer Course Vaccinology for Public Health and Clinical Practice in the 21st Century.

He is also co-editor-in-chief of Epidemics; an associate editor of PLOS Computational Biology and PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases; a member of the WHO Advisory Committee on Immunisation and Vaccines-related Implementation Research (IVIR-AC); a member of the MIT SOLVE Challenge Leadership Group; an SME advisor of MIT HK Innovation Node; and a Fellow of the UK Faculty of Public Health.

Professor Benjamin Cowling is the Lead Scientist of the programme “AI-Enabled Causal Inference for Disease Control” (Programme 3) at the Laboratory of Data Discovery for Health (D²4H), and Professor and Head of the Division of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the School of Public Health of the LKS Faculty of Medicine of the University of Hong Kong (HKU SPH). Professor Cowling is responsible for teaching the introductory module in epidemiology on the MPH curriculum, and is the chairman of the Departmental Research Postgraduate Committee and a co-director of the WHO Collaborating Centre for Infectious Disease Epidemiology and Control at HKU SPH.

Professor Cowling’s primary research focus is in infectious disease epidemiology. In recent years, he has designed and implemented large field studies of influenza transmission in the community and the effectiveness and impact of control measures. 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 Cowling is a fellow of the Royal Statistical Society and a Fellow of the UK Faculty of Public Health. He is the Editor-in-Chief of Influenza and Other Respiratory Viruses, and an Associate Editor of Emerging Infectious Diseases. Professor Cowling has more than 500 publications listed in Scopus, including 66 articles with 66 or more citations (H-index of 66). He has received numerous awards including HKU Outstanding Young Researcher Award (2011), Croucher Senior Research Fellowship (2015), HKU Outstanding Researcher Award (2017), and RGC Senior Research Fellowship (2020). He was awarded an MBE in Queen Elizabeth II’s 2021 birthday honours.

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 was 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. Professor Wong 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 for five consecutive years between 2015 and 2019.

Professor Wong’s expertise is using big data research to investigate the safety and optimum use of medications to treat 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 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.

Professor 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.