Professor Kwok-Yung Yuen, Chair of Infectious Diseases at HKU, has the rare distinction of being a microbiologist, surgeon and physician. He is a fellow of both the UK and Hong Kong Colleges of Pathologists, Surgeons and Physicians, and the American College of Physicians. KY Yuen was the first Director of the State Key Laboratory of Emerging Infectious Diseases at HKU– the first State Key Laboratory outside the Mainland. He was also the Scientific Co-director of the HKU-Pasteur Research Centre. KY Yuen played a key role in the discovery of the agent causing SARS, and also published the first clinical and laboratory diagnostic paper on Influenza A H5N1 in the Lancet.