Kenneth Hu, PhD

Kenneth Hu, PhD, started his scientific journey as an undergraduate in biology and physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he participated in a number of published studies examining the genetic basis of Toxoplasma gondii virulence and host susceptibility using QTL mapping. From these early studies, he became fascinated by microscopy and its ability to reveal the structural elements of biology at multiple length scales. As a graduate student at Stanford University, Dr. Hu developed new techniques for simultaneous fluorescence imaging of live cells and real-time single-cell force measurements using atomic force microscopy (AFM). Using this tool, he and his colleagues revealed the role of force generation and cytoskeletal stiffness in T cells during antigen recognition.

From there, Dr. Hu did his postdoctoral work at the University of California, San Francisco as a Parker Scholar and continued to develop and apply new methods to enhance the information that can be extracted from imaging. Dr. Hu and his colleagues developed a new approach, termed ZipSeq, for regional barcoding of cells in intact tissue sections allowing for the integration of imaging and single-cell RNA sequencing. They have since applied this approach to discover how gene expression varied as a function of spatial location in tumor-infiltrating immune cells to infer cell-cell communication mechanisms that lead to tumor spatial heterogeneity in a number of collaborative studies.

Now as a Parker Bridge Fellow and Assistant Professor of Immunology at MD Anderson, Dr. Hu’s independent research will apply spatial transcriptomics tools to discover how emergent spatial heterogeneity arises in the tumor microenvironment and interacts with immunotherapies.

• 2017: Stanford University, PhD, Biophysics
• 2012: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, BS, Biology

• 2022: Parker Bridge Fellow
• 2020: American Cancer Society Postdoctoral Fellowship
• 2019: Parker Scholar
• 2017: UCSF Institutional Training Grant T32