Stephanie MA

• Associate Vice-President (Research and Innovation), The University of Hong Kong
• Jimmy and Emily Tang Endowed Professor in Molecular Genetics, School of Biomedical Sciences, LKS Faculty of Medicine, The University of Hong Kong
• Founding Member and Vice-President, Hong Kong Young Academy of Sciences

Prof. Ma obtained her B.Sc. (Cell Biology and Genetics) and M.Sc. (Experimental Medicine) degrees from the University of British Columbia (Canada), and graduated from The University of Hong Kong (HKU) with a Ph.D. of outstanding ranking that was awarded the Li Ka Shing Prize for the Best PhD Thesis of that year. Since then, she has been working at HKU where she is currently the Jimmy and Emily Tang Professor in Molecular Genetics at the School of Biomedical Sciences in Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine, HKU (HKUMed), and Associate Vice-President (Research and Innovation) at HKU. Prof. Ma’s team is dedicated to better understand how a more stemness and undifferentiated state in cancer can contribute to drug resistance, immune evasion and tumor recurrence, using liver cancer as a model system. In her field, she has been listed by Clarivate as a top 1% most-cited scholar and by Stanford University as a top 2% scientist worldwide. She is the recipient of a number of awards including the more recent 2017 University of British Columbia Alumni Builder Award (Canada), the 2021 Research Grants Council (RGC) Research Fellow Scheme as well as the 2023 Croucher Senior Research Fellowship. Professor Ma currently serves as a member of the Board of Directors at Hong Kong Science and Technology Parks (HKSTP) and a member of the Advisory Board of the Hong Kong Life Sciences Society (HKLSS). Prof. Ma is a founding member and current Vice-President of the Hong Kong Young Academy of Sciences (YASHK).