Malik Peiris is a clinical and public health virologist with a particular interest in emerging virus diseases at the animal-human interface including influenza, coronaviruses and others. His research has provided understanding on the emergence and pathogenesis of the 2009 pandemic H1N1 virus and on avian influenza viruses H5N1, H9N2 and H7N9. In 2003, he played a key role in the discovery that a novel coronavirus was the cause of SARS, its diagnosis and pathogenesis. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of London in 2006, a Foreign Associate of The National Academy of Sciences of the United States in 2017, and received the John Dirks Canada Gairdner Global Health Award in 2021, in recognition of his distinguished and continuing achievements in original research.