Professor Maria Zhu Huachen

Biography

Professor Maria Zhu Huachen is an Associate Professor at the School of Public Health, The University of Hong Kong (HKU) and Adjunct Professor at Shantou University (STU). She serves as Associate Director of the Joint Institute of Virology (STU/HKU) and the Joint Laboratory for International Collaboration in Virology and Emerging Infectious Diseases. She is also a technical expert and consultant for the World Health Organization (WHO).

Her research focuses on elucidating the mechanisms underlying virus emergence at the human-animal interface. She has published over 140 peer-reviewed articles and holds 19 patents, with more than 16,000 citations. Her scholarly impact is reflected in an H-index of 46 and an i10-index of 93. Her work has been published in high-impact journals such as Nature and Science, with several papers recognised as ESI Hot Papers and Highly Cited Papers. She has been ranked among the top 1% of scholars worldwide by Clarivate Analytics for nine consecutive years (2017–2025), and was listed among the top 0.05% of global scholars in phylogenetics in 2022. From 2022 to 2024, she has also been recognised among the top 0.5% of global scholars in pandemic research (Top Scholar - Lifetime by ScholarGPS®).

Professor Zhu has received numerous prestigious awards, including the Promising Investigator Prize from the International Society for Influenza and other Respiratory Virus Diseases (ISIRV, 2013), the Grand Prize of the 2017 State Scientific and Technological Progress Award by the People’s Republic of China’s State Council, the "Hero Cup" Award for the Outstanding Young Researchers in Experimental Medicine (2019), and the China Young Women in Science Award (2020). She has also been honoured with the HKU Research Output Prize (2011-2016), the Outstanding Young Researcher Award (2016), and national awards such as the National Medical Science and Technology Award (CMA 2015) and the National Preventive Medicine Award (CPMA 2015).