Professor Francis Ka Leung CHAN, SBS, JP, Dean of the Faculty of Medicine, The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK), is Choh-Ming Li Professor of Medicine and Therapeutics and Director of Centre for Gut Microbiota Research at CUHK. He serves as a Board Member of the Hong Kong Hospital Authority and an Honorary Consultant Physician at the Prince of Wales Hospital. He is the Co-director of the Microbiota I-Center (MagIC) Limited established under the Innovation and Technology Commission, HKSAR Government, and has co-founded a biotechnology start-up company, GenieBiome Company Limited in 2019. Being the non-executive Chairman of Board of Directors and Scientific Advisor of the Company, Professor Chan steers the research and development of microbiome diagnostics and therapeutics. As an inventor, he has filed 48 patents across the nation, U.S. and Europe.
A world-renowned clinician-scientist in gastrointestinal diseases, he has published over 840 full scientific articles in high impact international journals with h-index of 120. His contributions to medical research have been recognized worldwide with numerous national and international honours and awards. To name a few, they are the Croucher Senior Medical Research Fellowship 2008; Andy Martynoga Memorial Lecturer (England) in 2008; JGHF Marshall & Warren Lecturer (Asian Pacific Association of Gastroenterology) in 2011; The State Natural Science Award (PRC) in 2016; and the Outstanding Scientific Research Output Awards (Ministry of Education, PRC) in 2011 and 2020. In recognition of his outstanding achievement, he was bestowed with Doctor of Science from CUHK in 2011 and received an honorary doctorate from Osaka City University in 2018. He is the first Chinese and second in Asia to be conferred the International Leadership Award by the American College of Gastroenterology in 2018 to recognize his remarkable achievements and leadership in gastroenterology. In 2019, ExpertScape named him top 0.06% world expert in Aspirin, Helicobacter Infections and Peptic Ulcer. His recent honours would be the Golden and Silver Medals in the 2022 Special Edition of International Exhibition of Inventions of Geneva, with inventions on specific fecal bacterial markers of ASD, level up FMT treatment, G-NiiB Immunity products and M3CRC^TM colorectal cancer risk prediction test.
Since Professor Chan took office as Dean, he strives to position the Faculty as a leading international institution in Asia. The Medical School of CUHK has risen in 40 years to be ranked 1st in Hong Kong, 2nd in Asia, and 29th globally in the QS World University Ranking 2022.