Professor Vijaykrishna Dhanasekaran was appointed as Associate Professor in the School of Public Health (SPH) at HKU in 2020. Before joining SPH, he was faculty at Duke-NUS Medical School Singapore from 2010 and Monash University Australia from 2016, and prior to that a postdoctoral fellow and research assistant professor at HKU Department of Microbiology. He has a BSc, MSc and MPhil from University of Madras (1994-2000), and a PhD in microbial ecology and evolution from HKU (2002-2005).

Professor Dhanasekaran is head of Pathogen Evolution lab. His primary research focus is on the genomic evolution and epidemiology of rapidly evolving viruses such as SARS-CoV-2, influenza, RSV, and others. By conducting epidemiological studies across Asia-Pacific, and through integration of genomic datasets with clinical and immunological data, his group aims to advance understanding of the genetic and ecological factors that determine the emergence and distribution of infectious diseases. Professor Dhanasekaran has published over 100 research articles with >10,000 citations.

He is on the editorial board of Communication Medicine and Frontiers in Virology. He can be followed on twitter at @vijay_lab.

Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=7Hy0s6IAAAAJ

Lab websites: http://vjlab.io/, https://www.hkupasteur.hku.hk/the-vijay-dhanasekaran-lab

1. Dhanasekaran V*, Sullivan S, Edwards KM, Xie R, Khvorov A, Valkenburg SA, Cowling BJ, Barr IG. Human seasonal influenza under COVID-19 and the potential consequences of influenza lineage elimination. Nat Commun. 2022 Mar 31;13(1):1721. [link] * Corresponding authors
2. Eden JS, Sikazwe C, Xie R, Deng YM, Sullivan SG, Michie A, Levy A, Cutmore E, Blyth CC, Britton PN, Crawford N, Dong X, Dwyer DE, Edwards KM, Horsburgh BA, Foley D, Kennedy K, Minney-Smith C, Speers D, Tulloch RL, Holmes EC, Dhanasekaran V*, Smith DW*, Kok J*, Barr IG*; Australian RSV study group. Off-season RSV epidemics in Australia after easing of COVID-19 restrictions. Nat Commun. 2022 May 24;13(1):2884. [link] * Corresponding authors.
3. Gu H, Xie R, Adam DC, Tsui JL, Chu DK, Chang LDJ, Cheuk SSY, Gurung S, Krishnan P, Ng DYM, Liu GYZ, Wan CKC, Cheng SSM, Edwards KM, Leung KSM, Wu JT, Tsang DNC, Leung GM, Cowling BJ, Peiris M, Lam TTY, Dhanasekaran V*, Poon LLM*. Genomic epidemiology of SARS-CoV-2 under an elimination strategy in Hong Kong. Nat Commun. 2022 Feb 8;13(1):736. [link * Corresponding authors.
4. Vieira MC, Donato CM, Arevalo P, Rimmelzwaan GF, Wood T, Lopez L, Huang QS, Dhanasekaran V, Koelle K, Cobey S. Lineage-specific protection and immune imprinting shape the age distributions of influenza B cases. Nat Commun. 2021 Jul 14;12(1):4313. [link]
5. Virk RK, Jayakumar J, Mendenhall IH, Moorthy M, Lam P, Linster M, Lim J, Lin C, Oon LLE, Lee HK, Koay ESC, Dhanasekaran V, Smith GJD, Su YCF. Divergent evolutionary trajectories of influenza B viruses underlie their contemporaneous epidemic activity. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2020 Jan 7;117(1):619-628. [link]
6. Deng YM, Wong FYK, Spirason N, Kaye M, Beazley R, Grau MLL, Shan S, Stevens V, Subbarao K, Sullivan S, Barr IG, Dhanasekaran V. Locally Acquired Human Infection with Swine-Origin Influenza A(H3N2) Variant Virus, Australia, 2018. Emerg Infect Dis. 2020;26(1):143-147. [link]
7. Dhanasekaran V, Holmes EC, Joseph U, Fourment M, Su YC, Halpin R, Lee RT, Deng YM, Gunalan V, Lin X, Stockwell TB, Fedorova NB, Zhou B, Spirason N, Kühnert D, Bošková V, Stadler T, Costa AM, Dwyer DE, Huang QS, Jennings LC, Rawlinson W, Sullivan SG, Hurt AC, Maurer-Stroh S, Wentworth DE, Smith GJ, Barr IG. The contrasting phylodynamics of human influenza B viruses. Elife. 2015 Jan 16;4:e05055. [link]
8. Dhanasekaran V, Smith GJ, Pybus OG, Zhu H, Bhatt S, Poon LL, Riley S, Bahl J, Ma SK, Cheung CL, Perera RA, Chen H, Shortridge KF, Webby RJ, Webster RG, Guan Y, Peiris JS. Long-term evolution and transmission dynamics of swine influenza A virus. Nature. 2011 May 26;473(7348):519-22. [link]
9. Dhanasekaran V, Poon LLM, Zhu HC, Ma SK, Li OT, Cheung CL, Smith GJ, Peiris JS^#, Guan Y. Reassortment of pandemic H1N1/2009 influenza A virus in swine. Science. 2010 Jun 18;328(5985):1529. [link]
10. Smith GJ^, Dhanasekaran V^, Bahl J^, Lycett SJ^, Worobey M^, Pybus OG√, Ma SK, Cheung CL, Raghwani J, Bhatt S, Peiris JS, Guan Y, Rambaut A^. Origins and evolutionary genomics of the 2009 swine-origin H1N1 influenza A epidemic. Nature. 2009 Jun 25;459(7250):1122-5. [link] ^ Equally contributing authors.