Meng Zhu, PhD

Principal investigator

Meng Zhu received her BSc in Biological Sciences from Tsinghua University in 2014. She went on to complete her PhD at the University of Cambridge, where she worked in Magdalena Zernicka-Goetz’s lab, studying the timing mechanisms of cell polarisation and cell fate regulation in early human and mouse embryos. In late 2020, she joined the laboratory of Cliff Tabin in the Department of Genetics at Harvard Medical School as a postdoctoral fellow supported by a Human Frontier Science Program (HFSP) Long-Term Fellowship. There she investigated the causes and consequences of developmental heterochrony in limb development during evolution.

She is starting her lab at the Gurdon Institute and the Department of Genetics at the University of Cambridge in September 2026.

Meng has been actively involved in mentoring students from undergraduate to PhD levels since her senior graduate years. She has also contributed to the organisation of scientific seminars, including the Virtual Gastrulation Zoom Talks (Season 4), and highlighting preprint articles as a prelighter. She was named one of the “100 Extraordinary Biologists” by The Company of Biologists.

Besides pursuing research, Meng has strong interests in graphic design and early medieval Western European history. She has written a fiction novel on time travel of medieval Britannia and has enjoyed learning the Welsh language.