Education

• M.D., Medicine, Qingdao University Medical School, Qingdao, China, 1984

• M.S., Microbiology and Immunology, Shandong University Medical School and Shandong Academy of Medical Sciences, Jinan, China, 1987

• Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Immunology, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, 1993-1996

  Honors and Awards

• Invited Speaker, NIH Director's Seminar Series , 2009, http://videocast.nih.gov/pastevents.asp?c=25

• The Wang Ying-Lai Memorial Lecture, Annual Meeting of The Texas Chapter of Society of Chinese Bioscientists in America ( SCBA), Houston, Texas, 2011

• Co-organizer and co-chair, Keystone Symposium, TGF-beta in Immune Responses: From Bench to Bedside, Snowbird, Utah, 2011

  Research Interests/Scientific Focus

  We are elucidating mechanisms of TGF-beta regulation of T-cell immunity and tolerance, and manipulating T-cell immunity versus tolerance in animal models to understand the pathogenesis of autoimmunity and inflammation, cancer and infectious diseases and to develop potential therapies for relevant human diseases, with special attention to NIDCR mission relevant diseases, such as Sjögren's syndrome, periodontal diseases, and oral and head and neck cancers.