One Health Collaboration Hub Seminar Series:
A dialogue between a virologist and a medical anthropologist on emerging viruses
The ancestors of emerging viruses such as Ebola, Nipah, and Mpox have likely persisted in their natural reservoir hosts for centuries. Yet, why are we witnessing a surge in viral outbreaks in recent decades? Join us for an engaging lunchtime seminar featuring a virologist and a medical anthropologist as they review the reasons behind this trend and discuss strategies to prevent future outbreaks.
Date: 15 July 2025 (Tuesday)
Time: 12:30 - 13:30
Venue: SR3, G/F, Laboratory Block, Faculty of Medicine Building, 21 Sassoon Road
Sandwiches will be provided for registered participants.
Speakers:
Prof. Malik Peiris, School of Public Health, The University of Hong Kong
Malik Peiris is a clinical and public health virologist with a particular interest in emerging virus diseases at the animal-human interface including influenza, coronaviruses and others. His research has provided understanding on the emergence and pathogenesis of the 2009 pandemic H1N1 virus and on avian influenza viruses H5N1, H9N2 and H7N9. In 2003, he played a key role in the discovery that a novel coronavirus was the cause of SARS, its diagnosis and pathogenesis. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of London in 2006, a Foreign Associate of The National Academy of Sciences of the United States in 2017, and received the John Dirks Canada Gairdner Global Health Award in 2021, in recognition of his distinguished and continuing achievements in original research.
Professor Tamara Giles-Vernick, Institut Pasteur, France
Tamara Giles-Vernick currently conducts research at the interstices of medical anthropology and ethnohistory (historical research using anthropological tools), investigating infectious disease transmission and global health interventions in Africa. She leads multidisciplinary research examining the changing nature and contexts of human contact with great apes and monkeys in equatorial Africa and the health consequences of that contact; she also conducts anthropological research on hepatitis B and vaccination, the historical emergence of HIV in central Africa; malnutrition; infantile diarrhea in the Central African Republic; an historical epidemiology of malaria in west Africa; hepatitis C transmission in hospital and dental settings in Egypt; a comparative history of pandemic influenza; a history of global health in Africa; and the history of epidemiological surveillance.
Contact: onehealthsph@hku.hk
