Sir Michael Houghton BSc (University of East Anglia, UK ), PhD ( King’s College, University of London, UK) is the Director of the Li Ka Shing Applied Virology Institute in the University of Alberta and is the Li Ka Shing Professor within the Department of Medical Microbiology & Immunology in the Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry. He took up a Canada Excellence in Research Chair (CERC) in Virology at the University of Alberta in 2010. Working with Lorne Tyrrell MD PhD OC ( founder of the Li Ka Shing nstitute of Virology ) and a large network of collaborating leaders, he is involved in developing vaccines against HCV & Group A Streptococcus as well as therapeutics for Cytomegalovirus, Alzheimer’s, Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, & cancer oncolytics & immunotherapies. Previously he worked as a Vice-President Research in Novartis and Chiron Corporation in California where he and Chiron colleagues, Dr Qui-Lim Choo & Dr. George Kuo in collaboration with Dr Bradley of the CDC, discovered the hepatitis C virus (HCV) in 1989 for which he was a co-recipient of the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 2020 along with Dr. Harvey Alter of the NIH and Dr Charles Rice of Rockefeller University. He is committed to researching diseases with unmet medical need in order to improve healthcare.