On Jan 28, the American Academy of Microbiology elected 109 new Fellows in 2019. The “Class of 2019" represents fellows from China, the U.S., France, Ireland, the Netherlands, Israel, Korea, and etc. Prof. SHI Zhengli from Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) has been elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology.

Prof. SHI is the Director of the Center of Emerging Infectious Diseases at WIV, Director of the Key Laboratory of Special Pathogens and Biosafety of CAS, and the Editor-in-Chief of Virologica Sinica. She received her Ph.D from Montpellier University II, France, in 2000.

Her researches focus on molecular epidemiology and interspecies infection mechanism of emerging viruses of zoonotic origin especially those from bats. She has made distinguished and pioneering achievement in discovery and characterization of important bat-borne viruses. She identified the bat origin of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) and has made crucial contributions to prevention and control of zoonotic emerging infectious disease in China. She had got over 120 publications including research articles on high-impact journals Science, Nature, Cell Host & Microbe, PLoS Pathogens, etc. She won the first prize of Natural Science Award of Hubei Province in 2017 and the second prize of National Natural Science Award in 2018.

Fellows of the American Academy of Microbiology, an honorific leadership group within the American Society for Microbiology (ASM), are elected annually through a highly selective, peer-review process, based on their records of scientific achievement and original contributions that have advanced microbiology. Formed in 1955, the ASM is the largest single life science society, composed of more than 50,000 scientists and health professionals. Its mission is to promote and advance the microbial sciences. Now there are over 2,400 Fellows representing all subspecialties of the microbial sciences and involved in basic and applied research, teaching, public health, industry, and government service.