Daniel C K Yu Professorship in Virology

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. In 2001, he joined the University of Hong Kong as a Research Assistant Professor. He currently serves as a Chair Professor in the School of Public Health at The University of Hong Kong (HKU). He also serves as a co-director at both the HKU-Pasteur Research Pole and the Hong Kong Jockey Club Global Health Institute at HKUMed.

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. He was among the pioneers in developing specific rapid diagnostic tests for COVID-19. He promptly shared his assays with the World Health Organization (WHO) and provided his reagents free of charge to 170 public health laboratories across 77 countries in just a few weeks. Many of his additional research findings on SARS-CoV-2 have been integrated into public health policies both locally and globally during the COVID-19 pandemic. He also has a strong interest in researches related to vaccinology.

Professor Poon has published over 350 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 47,000 citations and an H-index of 101. 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.