Dennis Lo Yuk-ming
Associate dean (research), Faculty of Medicine, Chinese University of Hong Kong, whose team pioneered breakthrough Sars research in 2003.
'Sars-driven research had unusual levels of urgency. Normally, research takes years and is measured in months - during Sars, research was measured in days. Even the way the team worked changed. Instead of weekly laboratory meetings, we would meet twice a day to review data. The team became more like a family.
'Certainly, we felt pressured. Before, science was about curiosity, but with Sars, patients' lives were at stake. One project was to develop a test for the virus, and we knew that as soon as we'd got that done, potentially infected people could be tested and the spread of the disease minimised.
Psychologically, we felt more like soldiers than scientists. We were fighting the enemy that had infiltrated our city without us knowing and we felt a sense of duty to accomplish our mission.
'Our group was one of the first to decode the genetic signature of the virus [on April 16], and the first to demonstrate that there were multiple strains of the virus. This data has proven useful in tracing the infection and was used to develop a serum-based test for Sars.