Dr. YANG Guan (楊冠)

Dr. Guan Yang joined the City University of Hong Kong in July 2021 as an Assistant Professor in Immunology in the Department of Infectious Diseases and Public Health.

Dr. Yang owned his Ph.D. in Animal Molecular & Cellular Biology from the University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, specializing in swine immunology under the mentorship of Dr. John Driver. The major focus of his Ph.D. work was aimed at characterizing the phenotypic and functional properties of natural killer T cells in pigs and evaluating their contribution to viral immunity. He then received postdoctoral training in the laboratory of Dr. Luc Van Kaer at the Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, TN, where he studied the role of autophagy in immune cell function particularly in the context of autoimmune diseases.

At the City University of Hong Kong, his research program focuses on using pre-clinical models including swine and mouse to study infectious diseases and autoimmune responses.

Dr. Yang specializes in the areas of swine immunology, infectious disease, and vaccinology. He is also an expert in mouse immunology focused on using mouse models to study autoimmune diseases. His program is divided into two main research areas. The first involves phenotypically and functionally characterizing porcine innate-like T lymphocytes during different microbial infections. Dr. Yang's other area of research is in the field of autoimmunity, focused on evaluating the role of environmental factors such as intestinal microbiota in the development of autoimmune responses.