SMyLe Special Seminar with Prof. Dr. Ai Ing Lim

Maternal-Offspring Immune Partnerships

Ai Ing Lim, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor of Molecular Biology at Princeton University and a Freeman Hrabowski Scholar of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Her laboratory studies how reproduction reshapes maternal immunity across tissues and how maternal experiences influence immune development and health in offspring. Her recent work has revealed extensive and lasting remodeling of maternal barrier tissues during reproduction, including eosinophil-driven adaptation of the maternal intestine, and uncovered how maternal helminth infection can enhance antiviral immunity in offspring through the microbial metabolite indole-3-propionic acid.

Ai Ing received her M.Sc. from the University of Hong Kong before completing her Ph.D. at the Institut Pasteur in Paris with James Di Santo, where she studied the development and functional diversity of human innate lymphoid cells. She subsequently trained as a postdoctoral fellow with Yasmine Belkaid at the National Institutes of Health, where she investigated how maternal immune activation during pregnancy shapes long-term tissue immunity in offspring. In 2023, she established the LIMmunity laboratory at Princeton University to investigate the maternal–offspring immune partnership. Part of her research is supported by the Searle Scholars Program and the Branco Weiss Fellowship.

Join us for this exciting special seminar on site (Y03-G91) or via Zoom.