Zhiwei Chen

Biography

Dr. Zhiwei Chen has been the Director of AIDS Institute at the University of Hong Kong Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine since 2007. He received his PhD from the New York University in 1996. He then became a postdoctoral fellow a research scientist and subsequently a Staff Investigator and an Aaron Diamond Assistant Professor at the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center of the Rockefeller University. His research work defined the origin of HIV2 in feral sooty mangabeys and CCR5 as the dominant entry coreceptor of various non human primate lentiviruses. He was a guest professor at Wuhan University between 2003 and 2007 and has been a guest professor at the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences since 2007 and at Nanjing University since 2009. Dr. Chen has published over sixty research articles in peer reviewed international journals and currently serves as an editorial board member for three international journals. He is a member of the Advisory Council on AIDS appointed by the Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region and an executive committee member of the China AIDS Vaccine Initiative (CAVI). He was a recipient of research awards from the Charles H Revson/Norman and Rosita Winston Foundation and the American Foundation for AIDS Research.

Research Interest

The research interests of Dr. Chen include vaccine research for AIDS and other infectious diseases with a primary focus on mucosal vaccines for the prevention of HIV-1 sexual transmission. He is an inventor/co-inventor of two AIDS vaccines which have entered human trials in the United States. He is also interested in using new approaches to study mechanisms underlying AIDS pathogenesis.