Among the 65 new fellows inducted into the American Academy of Microbiology, Professor Wang Linfa from Duke-NUS’ Emerging Infectious Diseases Programme was a more unusual candidate.
The trained biochemist won over members of the Academy, which is the honorific leadership group within the American Society for Microbiology (ASM), following a highly selective peer-review process of how much his scientific achievements and original contributions have advanced microbiology.
“I am delighted and deeply humbled by this honour. I look forward to being a part of ASM’s mission to promote and advance microbial sciences,” said Wang when he received the news.
Wang played a pivotal role in deepening our understanding of the likely origins of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. During the early days of the pandemic, his team was among the first in the world to culture the SARS-CoV-2 virus from patient samples and developed serological antibody tests to identify an important missing link between two major COVID-19 clusters in Singapore. His team also invented cPass™, the world’s first surrogate SARS-CoV-2 serological test to rapidly detect neutralising antibodies that does not require containment facilities or live biological materials.
Professor Thomas Coffman, Dean of Duke-NUS, said at the time: “We are extremely proud of Linfa for being elected to this prestigious Academy. This is a testament to his passion, leadership and tremendous contributions to the field of infectious diseases. I look forward to his continued success and seeing more of our young scientists follow in his footsteps.”
Fellows in the Academy represent all subspecialties of the microbial sciences and are involved in basic and applied research, teaching, public health, industry and government service. The Class of 2021 hailed from Australia, Canada, Singapore, China, France, Ireland, Sweden, Slovenia, and Mexico, the United Kingdom and the United States.