Associate Professor Thomas Tu is a molecular biologist (15 yrs experience) and leads a research group at the Westmead Institute for Medical Research in the Storr Liver Centre (Sydney, Australia), where his team focuses on persistent forms of the Hepatitis B virus (covalently closed circular DNA and integrated HBV DNA) and develops methods to measure and eliminate them.

He is particularly passionate about developing an HBV cure and mitigating the associated liver cancer, as he himself lives with chronic Hepatitis B. This provides him with unique perspectives on the disease as a researcher, patient, and advocate. He has won multiple awards for his research and outreach, most recently the 2022 Young Tall Poppy Science award, an Unsung Hero for the 2024 Sydney Awards, and the Inaugural Paul and Valeria Ainsworth Precision Medicine Fellowship.

A/Prof Tu is the founder, chair and director of HepBCommunity.org (a global support network for people affected with HBV), guiding people through their diagnosis, and linking them with trustworthy scientific and medical information. Recently he has also established Hepatitis B Voices Australia, Australia’s first community group led entirely by people affected by hepatitis B. Finally, he is on the board of the World Hepatitis Alliance as the Western Pacific Region Representative.