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.

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 Wong is the Senior Research Director of the programme “AI-Enhanced Global and Personal Health Protection” (Programme 1), and the Co-Principal Investigator of the programme “AI and Pharmaceuticals in Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs)” (Programme 4) at the Laboratory of Data Discovery for Health. He is an Honorary Assistant Professor of the University of Hong Kong.

He is a member of the Vaccine Confidence Project, the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. He received PhD from Department of Family Medicine and Primary Care, the University of Hong Kong. Prior to his PhD, he graduated with Bachelor and MPhil degrees from Department of Mathematics at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.

His current research interests are pharmacoepidemiology, and health services research, particularly retrospective administrative database research and cost-effectiveness analysis of health care interventions. He has published more than 250 articles in peer-reviewed journals including The Lancet, Nature Medicine, The Lancet Infectious Diseases, Annals of Internal Medicine, Journal of Hepatology, Diabetes Care, Clinical Infectious Diseases, EClinicalMedicine, PLOS Medicine, BMC Medicine, Annals of Surgery, etc. He is appointed as member of editorial board of journal Primary Care Diabetes, and statistical advisor of Hong Kong Medical Journal. He was awarded the Glasgow / HKU early career mobility fund to be visiting researcher at Health Economics and Health Technology Assessment (HEHTA), University of Glasgow in 2016, and was awarded the HMRF Research Fellowship in 2017 to be academic visitor at Health Economics Research Centre, University of Oxford in 2019.

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, 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 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 an 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.

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).

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.

Professor 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.

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.

Dr Jiannan Yang obtained his PhD from the School of Data Science at the City University of Hong Kong. His research focuses on developing explainable deep learning methods for healthcare applications. He is dedicated to unravelling the “black-box” nature of deep learning models and enhancing their acceptance among medical professionals. Dr Yang has conducted extensive work in developing deep learning models using biological networks for various projects in drug discovery and precision, including drug repurposing, anti-cancer drug combination identification, and drug response prediction. Additionally, Dr Yang is actively involved in exploring the application of large language models to address biological-related challenges, such as the generation of T-cell Receptor (TCR) sequences with high binding specificity.

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.

Professor Qingpeng Zhang is an Associate Professor in the Musketeers Foundation Institute of Data Science and the Department of Pharmacology and Pharmacy at The University of Hong Kong (HKU). He received the B.S. degree in Automation from Huazhong University of Science and Technology in 2009, and the M.S. and the Ph.D. degrees in Systems and Industrial Engineering (minor in Management Information Systems) from the University of Arizona, in 2011 and 2012, respectively. Prior to joining HKU in 08/2023, he was an Associate Professor with the School of Data Science at The City University of Hong Kong (CityU). He previously worked as a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Tetherless World Constellation, Department of Computer Science at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

Professor Zhang is a senior member of IEEE, and an associate/academic editor for IEEE TITS, IEEE TCSS, Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease (2021), and PLoS ONE. He was a theme issue editor for Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical and Engineering Sciences and the guest editor for a number of other journals. He is on the executive committee of the International Society of Digital Health, Hong Kong Society of Behavior Health, Systems Engineering Society of China, and the Hospital IoT Branch of China Association of Medical Equipment.

His research interests include medical informatics, AI in drug discovery, healthcare data analytics and network science. His research has been published in leading journals such as Nature Human Behaviour, Nature Communications and MIS Quarterly, as well as featured in press such as The Washington Post, The New York Times, New York Public Radio, The Guardian and Ming Pao. He received The President’s Award (2022) and the Outstanding Research Award for Junior Faculty (2021) from CityU and the Andrew P. Sage Best Transactions Paper Award (2021) from IEEE Systems, Man, and Cybernetics Society.