Mei Hong

Dr. Mei Hong is a distinguished Chinese-American biophysical chemist and David A. Leighty Professor of Chemistry at MIT, where she has made transformative contributions to understanding biological structures through innovative NMR techniques. After earning her B.A. in Chemistry summa cum laude from Mount Holyoke College in 1992 and Ph.D. from UC Berkeley in 1996, she established herself as a leader in solid-state NMR spectroscopy. Her groundbreaking research focuses on membrane proteins involved in infectious diseases, including influenza virus and SARS-CoV-2 ion channels, HIV-1 fusion proteins, and bacterial multidrug-resistance transporters. She has made significant discoveries about the Matrix-2 proteins of influenza A viruses, revealing their proton-conduction mechanisms and drug interactions. Her work extends to studying amyloid proteins related to Alzheimer's disease and pioneering the analysis of plant cell walls. Her scientific excellence has been recognized through numerous prestigious awards, including the 2021 ACS Nakanishi Prize, 2014 Günther Laukien Prize, and 2012 Protein Society Irving Sigal Young Investigator Award. Recently elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 2024, she has published approximately 245 papers with an h-index of 67, demonstrating her substantial impact on the field of structural biology and biophysical chemistry.