Flossie Wong-Stahl (Yee Ching Wong): Chinese American Medical Researcher

Yee Ching Wong was born in 1947 in Hong Kong. Her family moved to Hong Kong in 1952, where she attended a private Catholic school. The school required her to take an English name, and her father named her Flossie after Typhoon Flossie.

Wong-Stahl was the first female in her family to attend college, and her family supported her in pursuing her dream. In 1965, she traveled to the University of California at Los Angeles to begin her undergraduate studies. She graduated with a B.S. in bacteriology in 1968, and she completed a Ph.D. in molecular biology in 1972. She did postdoctoral work at the University of California at San Diego, and then got a job at the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Maryland. There, she studied retroviruses with Dr. Robert Gallo. She and her colleagues discovered the HIV virus in 1983. She cloned the HIV virus for the first time in 1985 and contributed to the genetic mapping of the virus. Genetic mapping of HIV is important because it was the first step in developing blood tests to detect the virus.

Flossie Wong-Stahl currently works at the Center for AIDS Research at the University of California at San Diego. Her research focuses on gene therapy for AIDS and the development of a vaccine effective against HIV.