Department of Immunology, University of Connecticut, School of Medicine, Farmington, Conn. Dr. Beiyan Zhou is a professor of immunology whose interests are in obesity-induced health risks, including and cardiovascular diseases. She holds a Ph.D. in biochemistry/molecular biology from Northwestern University, a 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.  The long-term goal of my research is to understand the systemic regulatory networks governed by epigenetic factors in controlling immune cell formation and their functions in various tissue niches. My current research efforts are devoted to unveiling the roles of epigenetic regulators, including non-coding RNAs, in modulating immune cell function and their cross-talks with other cells in various metabolic tissue niches in responding to obesity stress.