Leo L. M. Poon

Professor Poon, a virologist and public health scientist, received his doctoral training at the Sir William Dunn School of Pathology at the University of Oxford. After graduating, he returned to Hong Kong to work as a postdoctoral fellow at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. In 2001, he joined the University of Hong Kong as a Research Assistant Professor and currently serves as a Chair Professor in the School of Public Health at HKU. He is also a co-director of HKU-Pasteur Research Pole at HKU. Professor Poon's research primarily focuses on emerging and re-emerging viruses that pose human health concerns, such as SARS-CoV, SARS-CoV-2, MERS-CoV and human/animal influenza viruses. He employs the "One Health" concept to study emerging viruses at the animal-human interface. He has developed several molecular tests for emerging zoonotic influenza viruses, such as H5N1, pandemic H1N1/2009, and H7N9. In 2003, he was involved in the discovery of a novel coronavirus as the etiological cause of SARS, and he was among the first to decode the SARS coronavirus sequence. This identification of the SARS coronavirus in humans and animals led him to discover many coronaviruses in wildlife, including the first bat coronavirus. In 2009, he played an active role in the H1N1 pandemic and identified the first reassortant of the pandemic H1N1/2009 virus in pigs. During the COVID-19 pandemic, he made significant contributions to our understanding of SARS-CoV-2 and applied these scientific findings to public health practices. He also has a strong interest in researches related to vaccinology. Professor Poon has published over 300 peer-reviewed articles and is a founding member of the Hong Kong Young Academy of Sciences. In 2017, he was awarded a Senior Research Fellowship by the Croucher Foundation. He has consistently ranked in the top 1% of the world's most-cited scientists since 2005, according to Clarivate Analytics, with over 44,000 citations and an H-index of 98. He has also been recognized as a Highly Cited Researcher since 2015. In recognition of his contributions to combating emerging infectious diseases, he received the highly prestigious Louis Pasteur Bicentenary Prize from the Institut Pasteur in 2023. Professor Poon serves as an expert for several international organizations and acts as an advisor for various task groups focused on infectious disease control within the WHO, FAO, and WOAH. He is also the Co-Editor-In-Chief of the Virology Journal.