Dr. J.-H. James Ou received his Ph.D. from the California Institute of Technology in 1982 and conducted his postdoctoral research at UC San Francisco. He started his independent research at the University of Southern California (USC) in 1986 and is currently a Professor in the Department of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology at the USC Keck School of Medicine. Dr. Ou is an elected fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He is also an elected member of Academia Sinica. Dr. Ou is an editor of Journal of Virology and a section editor of PLoS Pathogens. His research is centered on hepatitis B virus (HBV), hepatitis C virus (HCV) and hepatocellular carcinogenesis, with a strong interest on the role of autophagy in the replication of HBV and HCV and hepatocarcinogenesis. His laboratory discovered that HBV could activate class III phosphatidylinositol-3-kinase to enhance its DNA replication both in vivo and in vitro, and HCV could induce autophagy via a non-canonical pathway and temporally regulate the autophagic flux to enhance its replication and also to deplete TRAF6 to suppress host innate immune responses. More recently, his laboratory also reported that autophagy played dual roles in hepatocarcinogenesis. It is required to suppress the initiation of hepatocarcinogenesis and also to promote hepatocarcinogenesis once this process has been initiated.