Guan Yi, born in 1962, is a virologist. He is a Chair Professor at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Dean of the Shanghai Institute of Virology and head of a biosafety level-3 laboratory, and concurrently a Chair Professor at the School of Public Health, Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine, University of Hong Kong. He is co-director of the World Health Organization's H5 reference laboratory for highly pathogenic avian influenza and an adviser to its influenza expert group. He graduated from Jiangxi Medical College in 1983, took a master's degree at Peking Union Medical College in 1989 and a PhD at the University of Hong Kong in 1997. He rejoined the HKU medical faculty in January 2000, rising from research assistant professor to professor by 2005, when he also became director of the State Key Laboratory for Emerging Infectious Diseases; in 2012 he was appointed to the University of Hong Kong's Yu Chiu Kwong Professorship in Virology. He has also headed the Shantou University-HKU Joint Influenza Centre (2001), the Shantou University Institute of International Infection and Immunology (2007), the Shantou University-HKU Joint Institute of Virology and the Ministry of Education's international joint laboratory on virology and emerging infectious diseases (2016), and the Guangdong-Hong Kong Joint Laboratory on Emerging Infectious Diseases (2019). His work covers the ecology, evolution and pathogenesis of influenza and other emerging respiratory viruses. He built a virus surveillance network covering people, poultry and livestock, migratory birds and wildlife, mapped the main precursors and transmission routes of the H5N1 viruses circulating in Southeast Asia, Europe and Africa, and supplied most of the pre-pandemic H5N1 vaccine strains used by the WHO. During the 2003 SARS outbreak he helped identify the SARS coronavirus and its source in live-animal markets, work that helped mainland authorities avert a renewed outbreak in early 2004; he was among the first to isolate the SARS virus and to propose the civet cat as its host. In 2020 he co-authored a Nature paper reporting SARS-CoV-2-related coronaviruses in pangolins. He has published more than 350 peer-reviewed papers cited over 50,000 times and holds more than fifty patents. His honours include the State Science and Technology Progress Award (Special Class), the Canada Gairdner Global Health Award and the Ho Leung Ho Lee Foundation Prize for Scientific and Technological Progress, and he was named a Highly Cited Researcher by Thomson Reuters every year from 2014 to 2020. He has appeared three times on the cover of Time magazine among its eighteen medical heroes.
Guan Yi's virus-tracing work reshaped how emerging infections are understood. He tracked the genetic evolution of H5N1 avian influenza and was among the first to pin down the animal source of the SARS coronavirus, helping shift disease control from reaction towards surveillance at the source. He has trained virology research teams at the University of Hong Kong and Shantou University.
Achievements
- 1983 · Graduated from Jiangxi Medical College, later taking a master's degree at Peking Union Medical College and a PhD in microbiology at the University of Hong Kong
- 2003 · During the 2003 SARS outbreak helped identify the SARS coronavirus and its live-animal market source, aiding efforts to avert a renewed outbreak in early 2004
- 2020 · Co-authored a Nature paper reporting SARS-CoV-2-related coronaviruses found in pangolin samples