Dr. Shi Zhengli is a preeminent virologist renowned for her pioneering research on bat-borne coronaviruses and their zoonotic transmission potential. She currently serves as Director of the Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases at the Wuhan Institute of Virology under the Chinese Academy of Sciences, where she has been a permanent staff member since completing her Master's degree in 1990. Born in Xixia County, Henan Province in 1964, she earned her bachelor's degree in genetics from Wuhan University in 1987 before completing her Master's at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. She furthered her scientific training with a PhD in virology from Montpellier 2 University in France in 2000, gaining fluency in French that has facilitated her international scientific collaborations throughout her distinguished career.
Dr. Shi's groundbreaking work has fundamentally advanced our understanding of coronavirus origins and spillover mechanisms, most notably through her 2017 discovery published with colleague Cui Jie that identified the SARS coronavirus likely originated in cave-dwelling horseshoe bats in Yunnan Province. Her comprehensive viral surveillance among bat populations across China has led to the discovery of numerous novel SARS-related coronaviruses, filoviruses, adenoviruses and other emerging pathogens, providing unequivocal evidence that bats serve as natural reservoirs for SARS-CoV. Her early identification of high-risk viral sequences in bat coronaviruses and development of rapid identification protocols for novel pathogens proved instrumental during the initial stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. This body of work has established critical scientific foundations for predicting and preventing future zoonotic disease outbreaks through wildlife surveillance and molecular characterization of emerging viral threats.
Beyond her research contributions, Dr. Shi has significantly shaped the global discourse on emerging infectious diseases through her extensive international collaborations with scientists from the United States, Australia and Europe, including a notable partnership with Peter Daszak of the EcoHealth Alliance spanning more than fifteen years. She serves as Editor-in-Chief of the journal Virologica Sinica and has provided editorial services to Virology and Virology Journal, while also mentoring the next generation of Chinese virologists in high-containment research methodologies. Despite facing unwarranted scrutiny during the pandemic regarding laboratory safety, Dr. Shi has maintained scientific integrity, verifying her laboratory's records to confirm none of the bat viruses her team had studied matched SARS-CoV-2. Her current research continues to focus on viral pathogen discovery through advanced sequencing techniques, with ongoing fieldwork characterizing the diversity of coronaviruses in bat reservoirs throughout Asia to better understand spillover risks and inform pandemic prevention strategies.
