Eun-Kyeong Jo settled to work on the investigation of innate immune signaling to promote host defense against mycobacteria. Her group has been investigating how autophagy activation modulates anti-mycobacterial activities in the host cell. While working on autophagy, her group has also investigated the molecular mechanisms by which host autophagy regulates inflammatory responses. Her research group also found and studied in the role(s) of target molecules to regulate the infectious and inflammatory responses. Recently, her research group focused on the research investigating the key functions of orphan nuclear receptors. They showed that small heterodimer partner and estrogen-related receptor α play an essential role in the regulation of exaggerated inflammatory responses and immunometabolism. The goal of her research is to develop better therapeutic strategies to control infectious and inflammatory diseases through understanding the integrated signaling networks involved in the host innate responses to pathogen- or damage-associated molecular patterns.

Eun-Kyeong Jo has led the "Medical Research Center" at Chungnam National University (CNU, Korea) since 2007. She gained her M.D. (1991) and Ph.D. degree (1996) from College of Medicine, CNU. After postdoctoral training at Imperial College London, she was promoted to professor at CNU in 2008. She has published over 110 publications in highly peer-reviewed journals (Nat Immunol, Immunity, Cell Host Microbe, Nat Commun, Autophagy, etc) and currently serves as Director of Infection Control Convergence Research Center (MRC in CNU). She received Eui-Dang Research Award (2008), Pfeizer's Research Award for Basic Medicine (2012), and Wunsch Medical Award (2015).