Professor Leo Poon received his doctoral training in the University of Oxford. He currently serves as a Chair Professor in the School of Public Health at HKU. Additionally, he is the co-director of the HKU-Pasteur Research Pole and the managing director of Centre for Immunology & Infection, a research centre under InnoHK. As a world-leading virologist and public health scientist, Professor Poon has published over 300 peer-reviewed articles and has been recognized as a Highly Cited Researcher since 2015. His work has been cited over 4,000 times, and he has an H-index of 100. With over 25 years of experience studying emerging viruses, Professor Poon focuses on both human and animal influenza viruses as well as coronaviruses. His work spans from basic virology to public health virology. In 2003, he played a significant role in the discovery of a novel coronavirus as the etiological cause of SARS and was among the first to decode the initial SARS coronavirus sequence. His work on COVID-19 provided solid scientific findings to inform public health policy. He is an advisor in different task groups for infectious disease control in WHO, FAO and WOAH.
Leo Poon
