October 18, 2021
CEZID hosts Xiang-Jin Meng for presentation on hepatitis E virus
The COBRE Center on Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases, or CEZID, is hosting Xiang-Jin Meng, M.D., Ph.D., in the CEZID Distinguished Speaker Seminar Series at 2 p.m. Friday, Oct. 22, via Zoom.
Meng's presentation for the seminar is "Hepatitis E virus: expanding host range and cross-species infection."
Meng is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences, an elected fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology and an elected fellow of the National Academy of Inventors. He received his medical degree from Binzhou Medical University in China, a master's degree from Wuhan University and a doctorate from Iowa State University. From 1995 to 1999, Meng was a John Fogarty scientist and later a senior staff fellow at NIAID, NIH, Bethesda, Maryland.
Meng joined the faculty at Virginia Tech in 1999 and is currently a university distinguished professor. His research focuses on delineating the molecular mechanisms of viral pathogenesis and vaccine development against a number of emerging and zoonotic viruses, including hepatitis E virus, circoviruses, arterivirus and coronaviruses. Meng discovered swine hepatitis E virus from pigs and avian hepatitis E virus from chickens and demonstrated cross-species infection of hepatitis E virus, which led to the recognition of human hepatitis E as a zoonotic disease. He has published more than 348 scientific articles and is ranked in the top 1% of highly cited scientists from 1997 to 2007 in microbiology. His publications have been cited more than 30,245 times, h-index = 90.
Meng currently serves as editor-in-chief or editor for five international journals. He is an inventor of 22 awarded and 17 pending U.S. patents on various vaccines against emerging and zoonotic viruses. Two licensed commercial vaccines developed by the Meng lab are currently on the global market.
The CEZID seminar series is organized within the diagnostic medicine and pathobiology department in the College of Veterinary Medicine and is hosted by Juergen Richt and Phil Hardwidge.