Professor CHEN Zhiwei is the Founding Director of the AIDS Institute of the University of Hong Kong, which was established at HKUMed in 2007. He is now a tenured full professor in Department of Microbiology. In 1996, he finished his postgraduate studies at the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center (ADARC) of the Rockefeller University and obtained his Ph.D. degree from New York University School of Medicine in the USA. From 1996 to 2007, he was trained with Prof. David D. Ho and progressed from a post-doc to a research scientist, and then to a Staff Investigator/ Assistant Professor all at ADARC. Since 1991, he has been engaged in studies of HIV origin, molecular mechanisms of HIV/SIV entry, and AIDS/SARS/COVID vaccines. In recent years, he has been focusing on functional cure of HIV/AIDS, COVID-19 vaccine and immunopathogenesis as well as cancer immunotherapy. He has published over 180 peer-reviewed SCI papers. He serves as an editorial board member for AIDS, JAIDS, JMP and JNIP, etc.