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Professor Kyongtae Tyler Bae, PhD, MD, MBA, joined the Department of Diagnostic Radiology, School of Clinical Medicine in April 2022 as Clinical Professor and was appointed Chairperson in May 2022. He is also Global STEM Professor at Hong Kong University and Director of the Imaging Initiated Intervention and Intelligence Lab. He was an Associate Dean Clinical Imaging Research, Professor and Chairman of the Department of Radiology at the University of Pittsburgh. He was also a Professor of Bioengineering and the Director of the Imaging Biomarker Lab at the University of Pittsburgh. He graduated from Seoul National University with a BS in Chemical Engineering. He received a MS in Chemical Engineering from the University of Iowa, MS and PhD in Bioengineering from the University of Pennsylvania, and a MD from the University of Chicago. Professor Bae did his Radiology residency and fellowship training at the Mallinckrodt Institute of Radiology, Washington University in St Louis and rose through the academic ranks before moving to University of Pittsburgh. He also received MBA from Wharton School of Business at University of Pennsylvania.

Professor Bae has clinical and research interests in applying quantitative and physiologic imaging and computer applications in diagnostic imaging including contrast medium pharmacokinetics, functional and physiologic CT and MRI imaging, computer-aided diagnosis and artificial intelligence to advance clinical translational and imaging biomarker research in a wide range of diseases. Professor Bae’s Imaging Initiated Intervention and Intelligence Lab specializes in developing novel image-guided intervention, developing and analyzing morphological and functional imaging biomarkers from medical images, and improving the quality and efficiency of radiology practice by use of machine learning.

Professor Bae has published over 670 papers, proceedings, and abstracts including over 267 peer reviewed journal publications (H-index 77). He is responsible for securing over US$30 million in NIH and DoD grants to pursue research over the past 20 years in the USA. Professor Bae has received numerous research awards throughout his academic career, including the 2021 Lillian Jean Kaplan International Prize for Advancement in the Understanding of Polycystic Kidney Disease – the most prestigious award in the field of Polycystic Kidney Disease. He has also supervised clinical and research training of numerous students, residents, postdoctoral fellows and visiting scholars during his academic career. At the national level of radiology organizations, Professor Bae served as Chair of the Academic Radiology Research Council and Chair of the Radiological Society of North America Research Grant Review Study Sections in the USA.

Professor Bae holds sixteen patents and founded companies in the field of medical device and informatics. Eight of his patents were licensed for commercial implementations.

Dr Chan joined the Department of Orthopaedics and Traumatology, School of Clinical Medicine in December 2021 as Clinical Associate Professor of Practice. He sub-specialized in the field of joint replacement surgery after obtaining his specialist registration in 2009.

Before joining HKUMed, Dr Chan served in Queen Mary Hospital and was awarded the outstanding staff in the Hong Kong West Cluster in 2020. He was also elected as the President of the Adult Joint Reconstruction Chapter in the Hong Kong Orthopaedic Association (HKOA) in 2021, and was invited to join AORecon, an international body for providing education in arthroplasty globally, as a faculty member. Dr Chan obtained several important research awards in his career, including the Best Oral Presentation Awards in the Anniversary Congress of the Hong Kong Academy of Medicine, the Hospital Authority Convention, and the HKOA. He published papers in high-impact journals including Nature Reviews Rheumatology.

His main focuses include the multi-disciplinary management of knee osteoarthritis and ERAS (Enhanced Recovery After Surgery). Being an active member of the ERAS Society and OARSI (Osteoarthritis Research Society International), Dr Chan actively promulgates these concepts locally and globally. With their promulgation, lots of hospitals in the world have begun to run similar programmes.

Dr Chan joined the Department of Medicine, School of Clinical Medicine in March 2022 as Clinical Assistant Professor. She graduated with her MBBS degree at the University of Hong Kong in 2013, and joined the Department of Medicine in Queen Mary Hospital in 2014. She obtained her qualification of the Membership of the Royal Colleges of Physicians of the United Kingdom in 2016. She completed her Rheumatology training in 2020 and Advanced Internal Medicine training in 2021 at Queen Mary Hospital.

Dr Chan has special research interests in inflammatory arthritis and autoimmune diseases. She studied the role of advanced imaging in rheumatology, including the use of novel MRI sequence and the potential application of artificial intelligence in image interpretations in spondyloarthritis. She was awarded the Li Shu Fan Fellowship for Internal Medicine to support her study in systemic lupus erythematosus, with a focus on understanding disease subsets using genetic and functional analyses. As an associate investigator of the Asia-Pacific Lupus Collaboration, Dr Chan participates in regional researches to improve outcomes of patients with systemic lupus erythematosus.

Dr Chan joined the Department of Medicine, School of Clinical Medicine in March 2022 as Clinical Assistant Professor. He obtained his primary medical degree together with Master of Research in Medicine at the University of Hong Kong in 2008. After a period fully immersed in research, he completed specialist fellowships in both Cardiology and Advanced Internal Medicine at Queen Mary Hospital.

Dr. Chan’s main research interests are in the areas of Cardiovascular Medicine and Clinical Pharmacology. He aspires to develop novel clinical therapeutics for the treatment of cardiovascular diseases through translational research and clinical trials. He is currently the Coordinator of genetic studies in the Cardiology Division of Queen Mary Hospital. He also co-established the Cardiac Oncology Research Program at HKU under the Dean’s Fund, with an aim of shedding lights on aetiology and fight against the clinical burden of heart diseases in cancer patients

Dr Fu joined the Department of Orthopaedics and Traumatology, School of Clinical Medicine in November 2021 as Clinical Assistant Professor. He graduated from the University of Hong Kong in 2008 and obtained his Master of Medical Sciences degree in 2012 and Fellowship of Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh (Ortho) in 2015.

Dr Fu now specialises in joint replacement surgery, focusing on robotic assisted hip and knee replacement. He received overseas training at the Hospital for Special Surgery (NY, USA), Rothman Institute (PA, USA) and Massachusetts General Hospital (MA, USA). Upon his return, Dr Fu set up the robotic joint replacement service in Queen Mary Hospital and is a certified robotic surgery trainer and receives territory wide referral for complex joint replacement.

Dr Fu received the Young Achiever Award from Hospital Authority and Distinguished Young Fellow Award from the Hong Kong College of Orthopaedic Surgeons.

He is currently the deputy division chief of the Division of Joint Replacement Surgery, Queen Mary Hospital, and director of Hong Kong west cluster joint replacement centre.

Dr Lai joined the Department of Anaesthesiology, School of Clinical Medicine in February 2022 as Clinical Assistant Professor of Practice. She graduated from the Faculty of Medicine, University of Hong Kong in 2007 and received her training mainly in Anaesthesiology at Princess Margaret Hospital and Queen Elizabeth Hospital. Dr Lai became a Specialist in Anaesthesiology since 2014 and worked at Princess Margaret Hospital and then Queen Mary Hospital. She also received her second fellowship in Pain Medicine in 2020. Her main interests include a holistic patient care in patient’s Perioperative Journey, Perioperative pain management, multidisciplinary management in chronic pain patients and musculoskeletal pain interventions.

Dr Liu joined the School of Biomedical Sciences in April 2022 as Assistant Professor. She received her BSc and MSc degree in Sun Yat-sen University (China), and obtained her PhD degree in the University of Guelph (Canada). Dr Liu then worked as a postdoc research fellow in chromatin biology in the University of Colorado at Boulder (USA). Currently, her research is on how epigenetic variations are incorporated and maintained in the genome, how epigenetic markers on chromatin are regulated by histone chaperones and chromatin remodelers, and how chaperones/remodelers and histone variations interplay in diseases such as cancer.

Dr Wong joined the School of Public Health in February 2022 as Assistant Professor. Dr. Wong obtained her PhD in molecular virology, working on dengue virus, from the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at the University of Melbourne, Australia. She subsequently completed her postdoctoral training at the St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, TN, which was also the World Health Organization (WHO) Collaborating Center on the study of the ecology of influenza in lower animals.

Her laboratory’s research interest is focused on understanding the immunological and virological determinants of robust antibody responses after respiratory virus infection and vaccination at a population as well as at the individual level. This includes studying the immunological principles that govern antibody recall of rapidly evolving and antigenically-variable viruses using clinical or human cohort samples, or in animal models. This research area is critical to our understanding of respiratory viruses’ vaccine efficacy and pathogenesis and how that affects the population’s susceptibility to these viruses.

Dr. Wong is a full member of the American Society of Virology, American Society of Immunology and a council member of the International Society for Influenza and Other Respiratory Viruses.

Dr Yuen joined the School of Biomedical Sciences in March 2022 as Assistant Professor. Before joining the Faculty of Medicine, Dr Yuen graduated from the City University of Hong Kong and received her postdoctoral training at Duke University, USA. Her current research focuses on investigating the effects of environmental pollutants on health and diseases, particularly the multigeneration effects of endocrine disruptors on reproductive development using small fish models. Her research interests also include effective teaching and learning approaches in biological sciences.

Dr Zanin joined the School of Public Health in February 2022 as Assistant Professor. Dr. Zanin received his PhD in Microbiology from Monash University in Melbourne, Australia and underwent postdoctoral training in influenza virology at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, TN, USA with Dr. Robert Webster and Dr. Richard Webby. He subsequently established a research group at the State Key Laboratory of Respiratory Diseases in Guangzhou, China to study the emergence and transmission of zoonotic respiratory viruses. Dr. Zanin’s research interests are the host and viral factors underlying transmission of respiratory viruses and interventions against viral respiratory diseases.

Dr Zhou joined the School of Biomedical Sciences in April 2022 as Assistant Professor. Dr Zhou received his Bachelor (2008) and Master degrees (2010) from Sun Yat-Sen University in China. He obtained his PhD degree in biochemistry from Colorado State University in the United States in 2018. He continued his training on biochemistry and structure biology as postdoc fellow in the University of Colorado (Boulder). By utilizing state of the art technology in structure biology, Dr Zhou’s group will explore the impacts of chromatin factors on chromatin structure, and gain deep insights into the basis for epigenetic regulation of human genome.