Elijah Mena, Ph.D.

Elijah Mena, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Molecular Biology at UT Southwestern Medical Center. He received his bachelor’s degree in Chemistry from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and his Ph.D. in Molecular and Cell Biology from the University of California, Berkeley. During his graduate training in the laboratory of Dr. Michael Rape, he identified and characterized two key cellular quality control pathways, Dimerization Quality Control and the Reductive Stress Response, both of which are essential for cellular health and whose dysregulation contributes to disease.

In 2019, Dr. Mena joined the laboratory of Dr. Stephen Elledge at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital. There, he developed a range of genetic screening technologies applicable to the study of protein homeostasis and discovered a new mechanism by which the 26S proteasome selects substrates for degradation.

Throughout his graduate and postdoctoral training, Dr. Mena received multiple prestigious fellowships, including those from the National Science Foundation, the Jane Coffin Childs Memorial Fund, and the Pathway to Independence Award (K99/R00) from the National Institutes of Health.

Dr. Mena joined the faculty at UT Southwestern in December 2025. His laboratory focuses on understanding how protein degradation is altered in cancer and aging, leveraging innovative genetic, biochemical, and computational approaches. In recognition of his work, he has received a Cancer Prevention Research Institute of Texas (CPRIT) recruitment award and was named an Endowed Scholar in Biomedical Research.