Flossie Wong-Staal
Virologist & Molecular Biologist
Flossie Wong-Staal (b. 1947) was born in China. She graduated from University of California, Los Angeles and is Professor Emerita at University of California, San Diego. Wong-Staal cloned the HIV and is the first person to discover the anatomy of the virus. She is also co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer of Immusol, renamed iTherXPharmaceuticals, a drug company that focuses on hepatitis C. In 2007, Wong-Staal was named by Discover as one of the fifty most extraordinary women scientists.
(Portrait by Salvador Perez, SFSU 2015)