Mengwen Zhu
Program: Neurosciences
Current advisor: Adam Kepecs, PhD
Undergraduate university: University of Wisconsin-Madison
Research summary
Endometriosis is a chronic inflammatory disease where endometrial (or endometrium-like) tissue attach and grow outside of the uterus. It affects nearly 10% of females in their reproductive age and a significant fraction of patients report chronic fatigue, though research on this psychiatric comorbidity of endometriosis remains sparse and overlooked. My research in Kepecs lab focuses on dissecting the neuroimmune circuit that mediates fatigue behavior in a murine model of endometriosis. I will leverage quantitative behavioral measurement, immunohistochemitry, brain-wide cfos scan, multiplex cytokine profiling, neural circuit tracing, in vivo optical recording, electrophysiology, as well as optogenetics / chemogenetics to map out this putative neuroimmune circuit.
Graduate publications