From 30 May to 1 June, 2016, SUSTech, together with Tsinghua University, Guangzhou Eighth People’s Hospital and Shenzhen Center for Disease Control and Prevention (Shenzhen CDC), held the 1st International Symposium for Infectious Diseases in the Academic Hall of the Faculty Research Building 1. Over 130 specialists and scholars from China, the United Kingdom, the United States, Japan, etc., including George K. Christophides, Professor and Chair of Infectious Disease and Immunity of Imperial College London; Richard J. Kuhn, Professor and Head of Department of Biological Sciences of Purdue University; George Dimopoulos, Professor of Bloomberg School of Public Health of Johns Hopkins University, attended the symposium. Vice President Wu Chuanyue addressed the event.
Ms. Zhang Yingji, the director of Public Health Department of Health and Family Planning Commission of Shenzhen Municipality and Prof. Zhang Linqi, Vice Dean of Tsinghua University School of Medicine also addressed the event.
In recent years, infectious diseases such as Dengue, malaria, Zika fever, Chikungunya fever spread widely across the world, causing great threats to public health and social stability. As a consequence, clinical and fundamental researches on infectious diseases became the forefront and hotspot in pathogenic biology research. Against this background, this symposium focused on the research progress concerning infectious diseases from different aspects, which not only facilitated academic exchanges between scientists from home and abroad, but also improved domestic and foreign prevention and control capacity as well as research quality. In addition, the symposium also discussed affairs regarding the establishment of Shenzhen CDC-SUSTech Joint Laboratory for Tropical Diseases.