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【Endowed Professorship】Professor Gabriel M Leung was appointed as Helen and Francis Zimmern Professor in Population Health.Professor Gabriel Leung is a specialist in public health medicine. His work revolves around topics that have major population health impact locally, where Hong Kong is a reliable and unique epidemiologic sentinel for China, or where the SAR is best placed to address the fundamental science at hand globally.Professor Leung established and has directed the University's Infectious Disease Epidemiology Group since the 2003 SARS epidemic and led the government's efforts against the pandemic H1N1 in 2009. He continues to co-head HKU's World Health Organization (WHO) Collaborating Centre for Infectious Disease Epidemiology and Control. Current priorities are investigating influenza, hand-foot-and-mouth disease, human papilloma virus and other infections of public health significance. His team is recognised as one of the world's leading epidemiologic laboratories in influenza research.In parallel, Professor Leung leads several large-scale longitudinal cohorts, tracking tens of thousands of lives to study the fundamental causes of non-communicable conditions and to explain the health impacts of contemporary social phenomena.A final strand of his work concerns the economics and policy issues of health systems. His team is the government's health accountant and projects health care human resources needs into the future. Regionally, Professor Leung has tirelessly worked to build capacity throughout the Asia Pacific. He served as inaugural Chair of the Asia Pacific Observatory on Health Systems Policies (2010-14).#HKUMedicine

【Endowed Professorship】Professor Khoo Ui-Soon was appointed as Ada M F Chan Professor in Oncological Pathology. Professor Khoo is internationally renowned for her studies in genetic susceptibility to diseases, genome-wide association studies, and the identification of alternatively spliced variants in breast cancer in Chinese women. Through her pioneering research, her team identified a novel splice variant to the NCOR2 gene associated with tamoxifen resistance and raised a monoclonal antibody targeting the epitope unique to this variant, which has been shown to be a robust biomarker to predict tamoxifen resistance.Her team has developed a multidisciplinary platform to test the novel use of Ivabradine, an FDA approved HCN (Hyperpolarization-activated Cyclic Nucleotide-gated) channel blocker used clinically to treat chronic angina, to effectively suppress breast cancer growth without the side-effects produced by conventional chemotherapeutic agents. In collaboration with clinician and scientists, Professor Khoo has developed breast cancer patient derived xenografts and established a large collection of breast cancer tissue microarray of Chinese breast cancer with clinical follow-up data for in vivo validation. She hopes these areas of research will eventually translate into clinical trials.#HKUMedicine

【Endowed Professorship】Professor Lin Chia-Chin was appointed as Alice Ho Miu Ling Nethersole Charity Foundation Professor in Nursing.Professor Lin is a recognised expert in cancer nursing and palliative care. Professor Lin was the youngest nursing academic in Taiwan to earn the title of Professor, and over the past 23 years she has established herself as a leading academic, devoting herself to providing global leadership in healthcare education and research. With her expertise in the management of cancer symptoms and palliative care, Professor Lin served as Chairperson of the committee that developed the first National Cancer Pain Management Reference Guidelines for Palliative Care in Taiwan.Her work focus on the physical activity in lung cancer patients has identified the attitudes, beliefs and preferences for physical activity among patients. She has demonstrated that home-based walking programmes can lead to improvements in circadian rhythms, mental health outcomes, and overall sleep quality. Following her work and papers in this field, clinicians in Taipei have introduced exercise counselling programmes for lung cancer patients as part of their clinical practice. In November 2016, Professor Lin's research gained international exposure when she was interviewed by Reuters on her findings.#HKUMedicine