Jennifer Kwong is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Pediatrics and Division of
Cardiovascular Biology at Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta, Georgia. She received an
undergraduate degree in Cell and Molecular Biology from Cornell University, and a Ph.D. in
Neuroscience from the Weill Cornell Graduate School of Biological Sciences at Cornell University.
Dr. Kwong’s research training centered on understanding how mitochondria regulate cell death
pathways in the setting of degenerative diseases. As a post-doctoral fellow in Jeffery Molkentin’s lab in
the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Division of Molecular Cardiovascular Biology at Cincinnati
Children’s Hospital Medical Center, she studied how mitochondria control cell death through the
mitochondrial permeability transition pore pathway in the context of heart disease. Specifically, she
studied the contribution of the mitochondrial phosphate carrier to permeability transition pore
activation and cardiac damage following ischemic injury, and also developed genetically targeted mouse
models to understand how mitochondrial calcium import via the mitochondrial calcium uniporter
complex regulates cardiac function and dysfunction.
Dr. Kwong’s research program at Emory is focused on investigating novel mechanisms utilized by
mitochondria to communicate dysfunction with the ultimate goal of identifying new pathways that can
leveraged to ameliorate cardiac function in the diseased heart.
