Shi Zhengli is a Chinese virologist who researches SARS-like coronaviruses of bat origin.
12 Facts About Shi Zhengli
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Shi Zhengli came to prominence in the popular press as "Batwoman" during the COVID-19 pandemic for her work with bat coronaviruses.
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Shi Zhengli was included in Times 100 Most Influential People of 2020.
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Shi Zhengli was born in Xixia County, Nanyang, Henan province in 1964.
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Shi Zhengli graduated from Wuhan University in 1987 with a bachelor's degree in genetics.
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Shi Zhengli received her master's degree from the Wuhan Institute of Virology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1990, and she received her PhD at the Montpellier 2 University in France in 2000, where she gained fluency in French.
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In 2008, Shi Zhengli led a research team which studied binding of spike proteins of both natural and chimaeric SARS-like coronaviruses to ACE2 receptors in human, civet and horseshoe bat cells, to determine the mechanism by which SARS may have spilled over into humans.
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In 2015, Shi Zhengli published a paper led by Ralph S Baric of the University of North Carolina, which showed that SARS had the potential to re-emerge from coronaviruses circulating in bat populations in the wild.
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Shi Zhengli is the director of the Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, located in Jiangxia District, Wuhan.
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On her resume, Shi Zhengli mentioned receiving grant funding from US government sources totaling more than US$1.2 million, including $665,000 from the National Institutes of Health from 2014 to 2019, as well as US$559,500 over the same period from USAID.
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Shi Zhengli is a member of the Virology Committee of the Chinese Society for Microbiology.
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Shi Zhengli is editor-in-chief of Virologica Sinica, the Chinese Journal of Virology, and the Journal of Fishery Sciences of China.