After spending 2 years at
Queen Mary Hospital for residency and internship, at the advice of
David Todd, a
professor at the HKU Department of
Medicine, Kan went to the
United States in 1960 to work and be trained in various North American institutions. He first went to Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in
Boston (now part of
Brigham and Women's Hospital) to work and learn
hematology under Frank H. Gardner, during which he became interested in research. and then joined
Vernon Ingram at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology to learn about
hemoglobin. He became interested in
thalassemia after attending to an
infant with
alpha-thalassemia. In 1972, Kan went to
San Francisco General Hospital to become the Chief of Hematology Service, and was, at the same time, appointed an
associate professor at the
University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). Kan was promoted to
full professor in 1977 at the Department of
Medicine of UCSF, and was cross-appointed to the Department of
Biochemistry and
Biophysics in 1979. Kan sat on the President's Committee on the
National Medal of Science, which reviews nominations for the award, from 1988 to 1990, and was the President of the
American Society of Hematology in 1990. He was also the President of the Society of Chinese Bioscientists in America from 1998 to 1999, and was the Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Croucher Foundation, Hong Kong, from 1991 to 2011. In 1993, Kan was appointed to head the newly established Gene Therapy Core Center at UCSF. Kan has also served on the Committee on Human Rights of the
National Academy of Sciences,
National Academy of Engineering, and Institute of Medicine (now
National Academy of Medicine) from 2000 until at least 2008, and was the Director of the Institute of Molecular Biology at the
University of Hong Kong from 1990 to 1994, which was dissolved in 2005. Since 1994, == Research ==