Bats, viruses and pandemics
Institutional Seminar
Event Information
| Date and Time | 2026/4/30 10:30am-11:30am |
|---|---|
| Venue | AUDITORIUM |
| Speaker | Linfa Wang, Ph.D. |
| Affiliation/Position | ①Professor, Programme of Emerging Infectious Diseases, Duke-NUS Medical School ②Executive Director, Programme for Research in Epidemic Preparedness and Response (PREPARE), Singapore |
| Country | Singapore |
| Title | Bats, viruses and pandemics |
| Organizer | ◎SATO Kei（Division of Systems Virology） 〇ISHII Ken（Division of Vaccine Science） |
| Additional Information | ※This seminar will be co-hosted with the International Joint Research Seminar Series 2026-1. |
Overview
I started my research on bat-borne viruses in 1994. In the last three decades, we have had multiple zoonotic diseases outbreaks caused by bat-borne viruses or viruses with ancestral lineages in bats: Hendra (1994), Nipah (1998/9), SARS (2002/3), MERS (2012), large scale Ebola virus outbreak (2014) and COVID-19 (2019/20). Bats are now known as one of, if not, the most important reservoirs of different viruses, yet bats carry these viruses in a largely asymptomatic manner. Bats are also the longest living mammal relative to body size. In this presentation, I will share my journey and lessons learnt from studying bat viruses and bat biology in the context of pandemic preparedness and OneHealth approach to infectious disease investigation and prevention.