In 1985, Xiang Jin Meng was admitted to the Institute of Medical Virology in the School of Basic Medical Sciences (Virus Research Institute of primary Hubei Medical University) studying as a candidate of master, guided by Professor Sun Yu, and he received a doctor's degree on biology and immunology at Iowa State University in the United States in 1995. He has worked as a senior research scientist in the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in the U. S. National Institutes of Health, then he has got tenure in Virginia Tech in 1999 and being a distinguished professor focusing on viruses in the school currently.

Professor Meng majoring in the important emerging virus in the field of veterinary and human medical public health, pathogenic molecular mechanism and prophylactic vaccine of zoonotic virus, he was the earliest founder of zoonotic hepatitis E virus, and he had developed the first commercially available the ring viral vaccine on animal fully licensed by Department of Agriculture in the United States. So far he has published nearly 300 academic articles in the international academic journals in peer review and they are cited more than 16642 times. According to the ISI Web of Knowledge of Thomson Scientific, Meng is the top 1% quoted scientists in Microbiology from 1997 to 2007 in the world. It is reported that Professor Meng, a scholar from China’s mainland since reform and opening up, is the first National Academy of Sciences Members in virology.