Dr. Leyi Wang is Clinical Assistant Professor of Veterinary Clinical Medicine and Virology Section Head of Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory, College of Veterinary Medicine at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Dr. Wang was a certified Veterinary Virologist by American College of Veterinary Microbiologists. After received his PhD degree from Ohio State University in 2009, Dr. Wang undertook his postdoctoral training at University of Georgia and Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center during 2009-2013 and clinical microbiology training in the Animal Diseases Diagnostic Laboratory of Ohio Department of Agriculture during 2013-2017.
Dr. Wang has co-authored 96 peer reviewed articles and 8 book chapters, and edited two books of Animal Coronaviruses. He is the co-inventor for two US patents. Dr. Wang is a reviewer of NIH and National Pork Board grants, and Editorial Board of Veterinary Micriobiology, Archives of Virology, Medicine, Scientific Reports, Journal of Veterinary Diagnostic Investigation, Journal of Clinical and Translational Hepatology, and World Journal of Virology.
Dr. Wang’s significant contribution to the field is that he for the first time reported identification of variant PEDV, deltacoronavirus in diarrheic pigs, novel sparrow deltacoronavirus, new Bottlenose dolphin coronavirus, and SARS-CoV-2 in tiger at Bronx Zoo. He has many years of experiences for vaccine development and for the first time to make protein polymers as vaccine platforms by utilizing homodimeric property of proteins. Since 2015, Dr. Wang uses Next-Generation Sequencing technology for whole genome sequencing of pathogens, especially for investigation of food-borne pathogen related illness.