Linfa Wang

Duke-NUS Medical School, Singapore

Linfa Wang is a professor of the Programme in Emerging Infectious Diseases at Duke-NUS Medical School, and the inaugural executive director of PREPARE, Ministry of Health, Singapore. He is an international leader in the field of emerging zoonotic viruses and virus-host interaction. His current research focuses on why bats are such an important reservoir for emerging viruses and on how we can learn from bats to make us more resilience to infection and diseases in general. He is a member of the WHO SARS Scientific Research Advisory Committee and played a key role in identification of bats as the natural host of SARS-like viruses. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, he has served/is serving on multiple WHO committees for COVID-19, including the WHO IHR Emergency Committee. Prof Wang has more than 500 scientific publications, including papers in Science, Nature, NEJM and Lancet. He is currently the Editor-in-Chief for the Virology Journal. Prof Wang was elected to the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering in 2010 and the American Academy of Microbiology in 2021. He received the Singapore President Science Award in 2021.