Jo-Ann C. Leong

Jo-Ann C. Leong is Director Emeritus of the Hawai’i Institute of Marine Biology in the School of Ocean & Earth Science & Technology at the University of Hawai’i at Manoa. Dr. Leong is also Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Oregon State University and the former Chairman of the Department of Microbiology. At OSU, she held the Emile Pernot Endowed Professorship. She is an elected member of the American Academy of Microbiology, served as the Chairman of the Board of Directors for the Center of Tropical and Subtropical Aquaculture in Hawai’i, is Past President of the National Association of Marine Laboratories, and co-chair of the Ecosystem Science and Management Working Group for the NOAA Scientific Advisory Board. She served on the Executive Secretariat, US National Climate Assessment, and authored “Hawai’i & US Affiliated Pacific Islands” for the Third National Climate Assessment, 2013. She was Viral Disease editor for Diseases of Aquatic Organisms and served on the Editorial Board of Marine Molecular Biology and Biotechnology, Journal of Marine Biotechnology. Dr. Leong published over 150 research papers from the work of 18 doctoral and 6 M.S. students. She holds 3 patents for the first fish viral vaccine and the first DNA vaccine for aquacultured species in the U.S. Her laboratory described a new genus of Rhabdoviridae, the Novirhabdovirus, and the type virus, Infectious Hematopoietic Necrosis Virus, kills millions of salmonid fish each year. She has devoted much of her career to the development of vaccines and control strategies for diseases of aquatic organisms.