George F. Gao

Director, CAS-TWAS Centre of Excellence for Emerging Infectious Diseases; Director, CAS Key Laboratory of Pathogen Microbiology and Immunology, Institute of Microbiology

A virologist and immunologist, Director of the CAS-TWAS Centre of Excellence for Emerging Infectious Diseases and, since 2008, Director of the CAS Key Laboratory of Pathogenic Microbiology and Immunology at the Institute of Microbiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences. Born in 1961 in Shanxi Province, he took his DPhil at the University of Oxford and carried out postdoctoral research at Oxford and Harvard. He directed the Institute of Microbiology from 2004 to 2008, served as Director of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention from 2017 to 2022, and has been Dean of the Savaid Medical School at the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences since 2015. His research addresses inter-species pathogen transmission and molecular immunology, and has revealed the entry mechanism of avian influenza virus and the molecular recognition of T cells. He has published more than 490 peer-reviewed papers and holds more than 25 UK, US and Chinese patents. He is a member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, an international member of the US National Academy of Sciences, a foreign member of the Royal Society and a member of the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina.