Rate My Professor Meng Zhao

In 2023, Zhao secured her first independent National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding through a five-year, $2.1 million Maximizing Investigators' Research Award (MIRA; grant number 1R35GM147713-01) from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences. This award supports her investigations into mitochondrial influences on T cell metabolism and function in autoimmune contexts. Zhao has published key peer-reviewed articles, including "Gpx4 Regulates Invariant NKT Cell Homeostasis and Function by Preventing Lipid Peroxidation and Ferroptosis" in the Journal of Immunology (2024), "Innate-like T Cells: Connecting the Dots Linking Microscopic Intestinal Inflammation to Spondyloarthritis" in Arthritis & Rheumatology (2023), "P-glycoprotein Expression Skews Mitochondrial Dye Measurements in T Cells" in Frontiers in Immunology (2025), "Distal Lck Promoter-Driven Cre Shows Cell Type-Specific Function in Innate-like T Cells" in ImmunoHorizons (2021), "Calcium Signals Regulate the Functional Differentiation of Invariant Natural Killer T Cells" in The EMBO Journal (2021), "Non-proteolytic Ubiquitination of OTULIN Regulates NF-κB Signaling Pathway" in Journal of Molecular Cell Biology (2020), "TRIM41-Mediated Ubiquitination of Nucleoprotein Limits Influenza A Virus Infection" in Journal of Virology (2018), and "Influenza A Virus-Host Protein Interactions Control Viral Pathogenesis" in International Journal of Molecular Sciences (2017).