Joseph Sung Jao-yiu, SBS, JP, was born in Hong Kong on 22 October 1959 to a family from Ningbo, Zhejiang, and is a Hong Kong gastroenterologist and academic, an Academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, the Eurasian Academy of Sciences and a founding member of the Hong Kong Academy of Sciences, and a recipient of the Silver Bauhinia Star and a Justice of the Peace. He graduated from the University of Hong Kong with an MBBS in 1983, obtained a PhD in life sciences from the University of Calgary in 1992, and an MD from the Chinese University of Hong Kong in 1997. He joined the then newly established Prince of Wales Hospital in 1984, working in pathology, medicine and gastroenterology and hepatology, returned to Hong Kong in 1992 as a lecturer in medicine at CUHK, became a professor of medicine and therapeutics in 1998 and head of the department in 1999, and from 2005 directed CUHK's Institute of Digestive Disease; between 2002 and 2010 he served as associate dean of the medical faculty and head of Shaw College. From 1995 he was elected a Fellow of the royal colleges of physicians of Edinburgh and later London, won the Croucher Senior Medical Research Fellowship in 2004, and afterwards became founding director of the Ho Hung-sun Centre for Infection. During the 2003 SARS outbreak he led medical staff at the Prince of Wales Hospital and was named an 'Asian Hero' by Time magazine. In research, his team was among the first to show that a one-week antibiotic course could cure Helicobacter pylori infection, treat peptic ulcers and reduce their recurrence, and pioneered the use of endoscopy in place of surgery for bleeding ulcers; he also chaired the Asia Pacific Working Group on Colorectal Cancer, has published more than 1,700 scientific papers, and was listed by Clarivate as a Highly Cited Researcher for three consecutive years from 2018 to 2020. In July 2010 he became the seventh Vice-Chancellor of CUHK, overseeing the introduction of the 3-3-4 academic structure, the admission of five new colleges, and planning for CUHK (Shenzhen) and the CUHK Medical Centre. Leaving office early at the end of 2017, he returned to medicine and since 2021 has been Dean of the Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine and Senior Vice President (Health and Life Sciences) at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He is now an emeritus professor of CUHK.
Leading the Prince of Wales Hospital through the 2003 SARS outbreak, Joseph Sung also advanced gastroenterology research, with his team's Helicobacter pylori treatment proving far-reaching; as Vice-Chancellor of CUHK he oversaw academic reform and the growth of new colleges, leaving his mark on both medicine and higher education in Hong Kong.
Achievements
- 2003 · Led medical staff at the Prince of Wales Hospital during the SARS outbreak and was named an 'Asian Hero' by Time magazine.
- 2010 · Became the seventh Vice-Chancellor of the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
- 2011 · Elected an Academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering.