Flossie Wong-Staal

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Flossie Wong-Staal (née Wong Yee Ching, Chinese: ; pinyin: Huáng Y'ng; August 27, 1946 – July 8, 2020) was a Chinese-American virologist and molecular biologist. She was the first scientist to clone HIV and determine the function of its genes, a significant step toward establishing that HIV is the source of AIDS. She held the Florence Riford Chair in AIDS Research at the University of California, San Diego, from 1990 to 2002 (UCSD). She was co-founder and, after resigning from UCSD, she became Immusol's chief scientific officer and then chief scientific officer until the company, which later became Immusol, which was renamed to a drug development firm focusing on hepatitis C, became the chief scientific officer and continued as chief scientific officer.

Early life

In 1946, Wong Yee Ching was born in Guangzhou, China. She grew up with two brothers and a sister as the third child in her extended family of four. Her family was among the many Chinese civilians migrated to Hong Kong after the Communist revolution in the late 1940s. Wong attended Maryknoll Convent School, where she excelled in science during her time in Hong Kong. Although no one in her family had ever worked outside of the family or studied science, her parents supported her academic pursuits. Throughout her time at the school, many of her teachers encouraged her to pursue her studies in the United States. She has also suggested that her name be changed to something in English. After a large typhoon that had struck Southeast Asia around this time, her father named her name "Flossie" for her.

Education

When she was 18, she left Hong Kong to attend the University of California, Los Angeles, where she obtained a Bachelor of Science degree in bacteriology. She was a graduate cum laude in just three years. She earned her bachelor's degree and went on to earn a Ph.D. in molecular biology from UCLA in 1972. She did her postdoctoral work at the University of California, San Diego, where she continued to investigate.

Personal life

Stephen P. Staal, a UCLA undergraduate, married a fellow scholar in 1971 while doing her PhD. The couple had two children (Stephanie and Caroline Vega) before divorcing around 1990. Wong-Staal was re-married to neurologist Jeffrey McKelvy, with whom she founded Immusol. She had four grandchildren.

Wong-Staal died on July 8, 2020 at the age of 73 at Jacobs Medical Center in La Jolla, due to pneumonia-related complications.

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