Jing-Ke Weng is Member of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research and Associate Professor of Biology at MIT. Dr.Weng probes the origin and evolution of plant metabolism, as well as how plants exploit small molecules to interact with their environments. Dr. Weng uses plant natural products with specific medicinal properties as chemical probes to query human disorders like metabolic syndromes and protein-misfolding diseases. Dr. Weng is particularly interested in elucidating the molecular bases of traditional herbal medicines and developing nature-inspired new medicines.