Joseph Sriyal Malik Peiris, MD

Malik Peiris graduated from the University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka in 1972 and did his doctoral research in virology at the University of Oxford (1981). He competed his clinical virology training and obtained his MRCPath (Virology) in 1982. He has worked at the University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka, The Royal Victoria Infirmary, Newcastle up Tyne, UK, and since 1995, at The University of Hong Kong. Till recently, he was Professor and Chair of Virology at the School of Public Health at The University of Hong Kong and now is Emeritus Professor. He is a clinical and public health virologist, with an interest in emerging virus disease at the animal-human interface, including vector-borne viruses, influenza (animal and human) and coronaviruses (SARS-CoV, MERS-CoV, SARS-CoV-2). In 2003, he identified the novel coronavirus that caused SARS and contributed to understanding its origins, diagnosis and control. More recently, he works on zoonotic, seasonal and pandemic influenza, MERS and COVID-19 using a One Health approach. He has over 950 peer reviewed research publications, including in Nature, Science, Lancet, New England Journal of Medicine and others, cited over 97,000 citations, h-index 140. He was elected as Fellow of the Royal Society of London and as a Foreign Member of the US National Academy of Sciences. He was awarded the John Dirks Canada Gairdner Global Health Award (2021), the Future Science Prize (2021) and Doctor of Science (Honoris Causa) University of Oxford (2023).