Professor Genhong Cheng is a distinguished tenured professor in the Department of Microbiology, Immunology and Molecular Genetics at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). He received his bachelor’s degree from Wuhan University in 1984 and earned his Ph.D. in Molecular Biology from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York in 1990. He subsequently conducted postdoctoral research at Rockefeller University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) under the mentorship of Nobel laureate David Baltimore. Since 1996, Professor Cheng has been engaged in multidisciplinary research in infection, immunity, cancer, and metabolism at UCLA. He has published more than 300 papers in internationally renowned journals, with over 50,000 citations. He has received numerous scientific achievement awards, including the Stohlman Scholar Award from the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. In 2012, he was elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), and in 2018, he was elected Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology.
Although he has lived abroad for more than 40 years, Professor Cheng has remained actively involved in academic development and scientific collaboration in China. His contributions include establishing the Center for Infection and Immunity at the Institute of Biophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences; the Translational Medicine Center at Jilin University; and the Systems Medicine Center at the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences. He also led the founding of the Institute of Systems Medicine at the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences and served as its inaugural director. In recognition of his achievements, he has received several national-level talent awards in China, including the National Overseas Distinguished Young Scholar Award.
Beginning in late June this year, Professor Cheng officially returned to China full-time and joined the Guangzhou National Laboratory as a Distinguished First-Class Professor.
A systematic overview of the type I interferon gene program and our long-term efforts in developing antiviral therapeutics targeting interferon-stimulated genes (ISGs).
