Mei Rui, DMA

Dr. Mei Rui is the Founder and Director of Music-in-Medicine and Assistant Professor of Neurosurgery at MD Anderson. A pioneer in the field of Music Medicine, she is the principal investigator of several large-scale, multimodal clinical trials designed to quantitatively capture and assess the neurophysiological impact of music-based interventions on peri- and intraoperative stress, recovery, brain health, cognition, and surgeon's performance in the operating room. Her research has been published in high-impact journals including Surgery, Lancet's eClinical Medicine, and JMIR.

A Yale-trained molecular biochemist and an internationally acclaimed concert pianist, Dr. Rui has garnered top prizes at numerous international competitions including the 2015 World Piano Competition. She has performed in prestigious concert venues around the globe, including a season-opening recital at the Louvre Auditorium in Paris, Reina Sofia in Madrid, Taipei Concert Hall and the Hofburg Palace in Vienna attended by the Austrian president. A dynamic soloist and chamber musician, she has performed all the Rachmaninoff and Brahms Concerti, and has collaborated with renowned artists and conductors including Itzhak Perlman, George Manahan, Robert Trevino, and members of the Juilliard, Takacs and Escher Quartets.

Dr. Rui also founded and organizes a groundbreaking in-hospital concert series that integrates real-time neurobiological data collections on patients, physicians and professions musicians. Since fall 2023, she has organized and performed over 50 free in-hospital Music-in-Medicine concerts, and brought in dozens of Grammy-winning artists and ensembles to share their gift of musical healing at MD Anderson and beyond.

A sought-after international speaker, Dr. Rui has been invited to present her innovative research and captivating performances integrating real-time EEG and Brain-computer interface (BCI) mapping at numerous internationally conferences, including plenary and keynote sessions at the EBRAINS Summit in Brussels, American Association of Neurological Surgeons (AANS) Annual Meeting, American Academy of Neurology (AAN) Annual Meeting, American Society of Neuroradiology (ASNR) Annual Meeting, Summit Baja, International Cancer Neuroscience Symposium, and Eudemonia Summit. In March 2026, she was invited by Princess Girona Foundation to present an innovative concert-experiment attend by King Felipe VI of Spain in Madrid. Upcoming engagements include a plenary talk at the Healing Arts Congress in Berlin and "Your Brain on Brahms"-a performance Brahms Concerto in Bb Major with Bogota Philharmonic integrating brain-synchrony mapping of the conductor and the soloist, and plenary sessions at Cartagena Festival.