2018 Wing Tat Lee Awardees Named

Four faculty members were named recipients of the 2018 Wing Tat Lee awards, funded to establish cooperative research programs between BUSM and Chinese universities, with particular emphasis on those in Hong Kong, while further deepening the friendship and mutual understanding between these institutions.

COM_Haiyan Haiyan Gong, MD, PhD, Professor of Ophthalmology and Anatomy and Neurobiology, has focused on glaucoma research for more than 20 years. Gong and Ningli Wang, MD, PhD, Professor and Director of Eye Center of Beijing Tongren Hospital, Capital Medical University, will study mechanisms to increase the fluid outflow to lower intraocular pressure in glaucoma patients through minimally invasive surgery. A post-doctoral fellow from Wang’s team will train in Dr. Gong’s lab. BUSM faculty will visit Tongren Eye Center to learn about their patient population (more than 109,500 outpatient visits and 3,000 surgeries annually). Gong earned her MD at Jiangxi Medical College and her PhD at Boston University.
COM-Jin Yang Jin, MD, PhD, Associate Professor of Medicine, will study molecular mechanisms of lung inflammation in bacterial pneumonia, a leading cause of death. Despite recent advances in supportive care, no specific therapy is available to treat acute lung injury and acute respiratory distress syndrome. Jin and Jinming Gao, MD, Professor, Pulmonary Medicine, Peking Union Medical College, will explore miRNAs as novel targets for developing diagnostics or therapeutics. Jin received her MD from Beijing Medical University and PhD from Rutgers University.
COM-Taylor Andrew W. Taylor, PhD, Associate Dean of Research, Professor of Ophthalmology, and Amy Lo, PhD, Associate Professor, University of Hong Kong, will study therapeutic approaches to suppress program cell death in the retina. Uveitis, acute glaucoma, and age related macular degeneration impair vision and cause blindness because of retinal cell death. Taylor received his PhD from The Ohio State University.
COM-Zhang Xiaoling Zhang, MD, PhD, Assistant Professor of Medicine in Biomedical Genetics, will examine how disease severity in Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) correlates with retinal and brain neurodegeneration. She will work with Zhigang Fan, MD, PhD, Sun Yat-sen University, to identify gene biomarkers and imaging markers in patients with mild cognitive impairment and AD to improve early diagnosis of AD. Zhang received her MD from Hubei University of Chinese Medicine and her PhD from Boston University.