Nancy Leung

Dr. Nancy Hiu Lan Leung is currently Takemi Fellow in International Health at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health, and Assistant Professor at the School of Public Health, The University of Hong Kong. Her research focuses on the epidemiology of respiratory virus infections, and she conducts large-scale community-based longitudinal observational cohorts and randomised trials on the vaccine immunogenicity, individual and population immunity, transmission and burden of influenza and COVID-19. Lately she is interested in applying causal inference analyses to address these research questions. Dr. Leung is a co-Chair for a WHO technical working group on COVID-19 airborne risk assessment, and a member of the WHO advisory group on the routes of transmission of respiratory pathogens. Dr. Leung has been featured as one of the “Five science stars making their mark in China” by Nature Index.

Dr. Leung has undergone comprehensive research training in the epidemiology/causal inference, infectious disease epidemiology and virology/immunology of human respiratory virus infections. Dr. Leung conducted wet-lab experiments to study the molecular mechanism of antibody-dependent enhancement of SARS (MPhil); set up hospital-based field studies on the aerosol transmission of influenza and other respiratory viruses, and community-based longitudinal observational cohorts and randomised vaccine trials on the burden and the effects of repeated vaccination for influenza and COVID-19 in Hong Kong and mainland China (PhD/postdoc); and adopts causal inference framework to analyse data from these studies to assess the importance of correlate of protection in vaccination (fellow).

Dr. Leung has 10+ years of experience in international collaborative research, publishes and presents regularly in peer-reviewed journals or conferences (h-index 16 from 2,804 citations, and 2 Highly Cited Papers in Field). She has received funding supports from major local and international grants including the Hong Kong Health and Medical Research Fund, Theme-based Research Scheme, the China Guangdong Natural Science Fund, the United States NIAID Centers of Excellence for Influenza Research and Surveillance/ Response (CEIRS/ CEIRR) network and the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). She reviews journal articles and grant proposals: for international academic journals across disciplines including JAMA, Lancet Infectious Diseases, Science Translational Medicine, Nature Microbiology and BMJ Global Health; and funding agencies including the UK Medical Research Council and Wellcome Trust. She teaches introductory epidemiology at the graduate level (class size 220+) and examine external PhD theses.