Introduction of Lihua Xiao, Recipient of the Henry Baldwin Ward Medal for 2012

Abstract

ing) in a humble home in a small, ancient town near the city of Yueyang, China. He was raised with a brother and 2 sisters by parents working in a local factory. During the Cultural Revolution, the entire family suffered as his father endured persistent persecution resulting from accusations of his being a bourgeois rightist. In 1976, when the turmoil of the Cultural Revolution finally ended, Lihua was 14. The education system that had been severely impacted or brought to a virtual halt for 10 yr became revitalized, providing a small gap in time for Lihua to focus on his schooling. He excelled as a student and was able to rise above fierce competition to receive the coveted approval to enter college in the second group of students to do so after the Cultural Revolution. In 1982, at Hunan Agricultural University, he received his degree in veterinary medicine. Lihua had developed an interest in parasitic diseases of livestock and was accepted into a graduate program at the Northeast Agricultural University in Harbin to study gastric nematodiasis of cattle under the direction of Professor Zhou. It was there he met his wife-to-be, Chungfu Yang, also a student of Professor Zhou. In 1985, he received his M.S. degree and became a faculty member in the veterinary school. However, Lihua wanted to further his education, but an opportunity did not exist in China at the time. Lihua was familiar with the publications of Harold Gibbs at the University of Maine. Their interests were similar. So, he wrote to Dr. Gibbs, sending an abstract from his Master's Thesis and a request to study under Gibbs' mentorship. In 1987, he was offered a graduate assistantship, enabling him to come to the United States and begin studies on the pathophysiological effects of Ostertagia, the brown stomach worm, in cattle, which led to his Ph.D. in 1990. Lihua spent the following 2 and a half years as a postdoctoral fellow at Ohio State University with Rupert Herd, where he continued studies on GI nematodes. He also initiated surveys on Cryptosporidium and Giardia in farm animals, 2 parasites that would later become major subjects of interest for him. In 1993, an opportunity arose for him to work in the Division of Parasitic Diseases at the Centers for Disease Control in Chamblee, Georgia. In the laboratory of Altaf Lal, Lihua led studies on the surface proteins, cytoadherence, and antigenicity of