Joseph Sriyal Malik Peiris is a Hong Kong-based Sri Lankan virologist, most notable for being the first person to isolate the SARS virus.
19 Facts About Malik Peiris
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Malik Peiris is the current Tam Wah-Ching Professor in Medical Science, and Chair Professor of Virology at the Division of Public Health Laboratory Sciences, School of Public Health, University of Hong Kong.
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Malik Peiris was a member of the Strategic Advisory Group of Experts on Immunization of the World Health Organization from 2009 to 2010.
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Malik Peiris attended school at St Anthony's College, Kandy, and entered the University of Ceylon, Peradeniya in 1967, obtaining his MBBS in 1972.
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Malik Peiris was awarded a Commonwealth Scholarship in 1977 and went to the University of Oxford for a DPhil at the Sir William Dunn School of Pathology, graduating in 1981.
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Malik Peiris underwent his training in clinical pathology at the Public Health Laboratory at Birmingham and Newcastle University, and completed his pathologist examination in 1982.
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In 1988, because of the Sri Lankan Civil War, Malik Peiris went back to Newcastle upon Tyne to become a consultant virologist at the Royal Victoria Infirmary.
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Malik Peiris moved to Hong Kong in 1995, tasked with setting up a clinical virology unit at Queen Mary Hospital and the University of Hong Kong.
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Currently at HKU, Malik Peiris is the Tam Wah-Ching Professor in Medical Science and Chair Professor of Virology at the Division of Public health Laboratory Sciences, School of Public Health.
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Malik Peiris is a co-director of the WHO H5 Reference Laboratory and the WHO SARS-CoV-2 reference laboratory, the Director of Centre of Influenza Research and the managing director of the centre for Immunology and Infection.
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Malik Peiris retired from the position of co-director of the HKU-Pasteur Research Pole, jointly created in 2000 by HKU and the Pasteur Institute in France, and became an Honorary Director.
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Malik Peiris has been an editor of Current Opinion in Virology since 2011 and of mBio since 2016.
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Malik Peiris has held a number of roles at the Hong Kong government, including a member of the Advisory panel on Emerging Infectious Diseases of the Hong Kong Centre for Health Protection and the Hong Kong Research Grants Council between 2007 and 2009.
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Malik Peiris currently sits on the CHP Scientific Committee on Emerging and Zoonotic Diseases and Scientific Committee on Vector-borne Diseases.
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In 1997, after the first human outbreak of the avian influenza H5N1 virus in Hong Kong, Malik Peiris turned his attention to the virus, which claimed the lives of a third of its victims.
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Malik Peiris became known worldwide when his group became the first to isolate the virus that causes this disease, a novel coronavirus now known as SARS-CoV-1.
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In February 2020, Malik Peiris published an article in Nature Medicine, presaging the outbreak of a new coronavirus.
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Malik Peiris reported the next month that a Pomeranian dog was infected with COVID-19.
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Malik Peiris is married to Sharmini Arseculeratne and they have a daughter, Shalini and a son, Shehan.