Yuen hired as honorary dean

HKU's Department of Microbiology Yuen Kwok-yung, was hired as honorary dean of the Shanghai Institute of Infectious Disease and Biosecurity in a forum on infectious diseases in Shanghai on Tuesday.

Yuen said they witnessed the start of an in-depth collaboration between the two institutes. He hoped to address the global challenges posed by infectious diseases through research collaboration, joint applications, and scholarly exchange.

Yuen, 67, born in Hong Kong, won the Life Science Prize of the Future Science Prize 2021 for his contributions in emerging infectious diseases from SARS in 2003 to Covid, which led to more effective strategies and responses.

During the Covid pandemic, Yuan published a paper in The Lancet in January 2020 on human transmissions.

In August 2020, Yuan and Huang Jiandong, a professor from Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology, co-authored a paper demonstrating for the first time that the coronavirus infects human neural progenitor cells and brain-like organs cultured in vitro.