The UW-Madison Office of the Provost has announced that McArdle Professor Wei Xu is one of 14 UW-Madison professors to receive the 2025 Vilas Mid-Career Investigator Award. This prestigious award recognizes research and teaching excellence and provides research funding (through the generosity of the William F. Vilas Estate) for three years.
Dr. Xu, the Marian A. Messerschmidt Professor of Cancer Research in the Department of Oncology, UW-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health, joined the faculty in 2005. Her research addresses fundamental questions on the roles of protein arginine methyltransferases (PRMTs) in governing essential cellular processes. Through understanding how their activities go awry in disease states, such as breast and kidney cancers, Dr. Xu and members of her laboratory are working to develop effective therapeutic strategies to control aberrant PRMT activities in pathogenesis.
“Dr. Xu is renowned as a world leader in research on multiple pathways crucial in cancer and other diseases,” said Paul F. Lambert, Professor and Director of the McArdle Laboratory for Cancer Research. “Among her research accomplishments, Dr. Xu has uncovered protein arginine methyltransferase control of chromatin and gene regulation, revealed new mechanisms of estrogen receptor action, and built on her striking discoveries to develop novel breast cancer therapies.”
In addition to her research accomplishments, Dr. Xu is a sought-after teacher and mentor. For over 15 years, she has taught in and directed the Oncology Department’s core graduate-level cancer biology course, Carcinogenesis and Tumor Cell Biology (Oncology 703). She serves as Co-PI on the NIH-funded T32 training grant in Surgical Oncology. In addition, Dr. Xu has mentored 17 PhD students, 11 postdoctoral trainees, and over 25 undergraduates in research projects, and has served on over 50 PhD student thesis committees. Dr. Xu also serves on the mentoring committees of six assistant professors and participates in the SMPH MATRIX program coaching young faculty to write successful NIH R01 grants. Dr. Xu has organized conference workshops on career development for women in science, and she conducts a monthly lunch meeting for women faculty members in the Oncology Department to encourage the discussion of scientific ideas, new collaborations, and challenges unique to female faculty members.
Dr. Xu also holds important leadership roles on campus and beyond. She is the Vice-Chair of the Department of Oncology and the Co-Leader of the Genetic and Epigenetic Mechanisms (GEM) Program of the UW Carbone Cancer Center. She has served on numerous study sections and review panels for the NIH, the Department of Defense, the AACR, as well as for international agencies, and currently is on the editorial boards of six scientific journals.
Dr. Xu said she is appreciative of this award and the funding it provides for her research program. “I am pleased to receive the Vilas Mid-Career Investigator Award. It provides important recognition for the members of my laboratory who continue to work hard to move our research forward.”