Professor Emily Ying Yang Chan has been a teaching professor at Chinese University of Hong Kong since 2006. Her teaching and research area mainly covers global health and medical humanitarian relief, with the goal of advancing the effectiveness and evidence-based relief effort to populations that are in danger. Not only is she a pioneer in Asia in providing medical humanitarian assistance, she was also the person who organized the first international medical assistance team to provide public health educational service to minority groups in the Hong Kong in the SARS outbreak in 2003.

In the past ten years, professor Chan has been an active field medical volunteer for Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), UNICEF, HelpAged International and Merlin. In 2000 she was appointed as the president of MSF in HK and became the first Asian female and the youngest person assigned in the role. She has worked in projects spanning over 15 different countries, including China, East Timor, Kosovo, Burma and Mindanao in the Philippines and most recently in Kashmir, Pakistan. Professor Chan has devoted her free time as a volunteer on engaging in extensive traveling and adapting to extreme circumstances. She even undertakes risks to personal safety. For example, she has worked with a nutritional assessment team in rural Zimbabwe in 1995 after a severe drought. She has also experienced car accidents in East Timor and Kosovo.

Through her papers and seminars, her experience is widely shared in Asia through. She has given an average of 30 public talks per year since 2000 and has published more than 20 articles on humanitarian and disaster issues in both Hong Kong and Mainland China.