Beiyan Zhou, Ph.D.

Associate Professor, Department of Immunology
University of Connecticut School of Medicine

Email: bzhou@uchc.edu | Phone: +1 860-679-7030

Dr. Beiyan Zhou is an associate professor of immunology whose interests are in diabetes, metabolism, and hematology. She holds a Ph.D. in biochemistry/molecular biology from Northwestern University, Master of Science in molecular biology from Peking University, and a Bachelor of Science in biochemistry from Wuhan University, and completed a postdoctoral fellowship in cell and molecular biology at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Dr. Zhou’s research focuses on understanding the link between immunes and adipose tissue in normal and obese conditions. Incorporating animal models with OMICs-technologies, her laboratory is devoted to understand the mechanisms underlying epigenetic factors, including histone modification and non-coding RNAs, in controlling immune cell functions. Work from my lab has contributed the first discovery of microRNA, miR-223, regulated adipose tissue macrophage polarization and microRNA, miR-150, regulation of B cell formation from hematopoietic stem cells. Her research group has developed various transgenic models and ex vivo characterization systems to critically assess the crosstalk between immune and metabolic compartment in the adipose niche in normal and disease (excess nutrient) states. She received Genzyme Research Award as a postdoc fellow in 2008 and Junior Faculty Award from the American Diabetes Association in 2013.