2025 Annual Meeting

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Overlooked: Less Studied Pathologies across ME/CFS, Long COVID, and Related Illnesses

Sunday, October 26, 2025

1:00 PM – 3:00PM EST on Zoom

Guest Speaker: Beth Pollack, Research Scientist,
Tal Research Group, MIT Department of Biological Engineering

Beth Pollack will explore and discuss aspects of ME/CFS, Long COVID, and co-occurring conditions that profoundly impact patients yet remain under-researched and frequently overlooked. She will provide an overview of the current research landscape and findings, share insights from emerging research at MIT, and highlight new collaborative projects with her colleagues that are advancing our understanding of these topics.

Focus areas include common comorbid conditions; hypermobility and connective tissue damage; spinal pathologies; environmental sensitivities; reproductive conditions, and more. Her talk will synthesize what is currently known, identify critical gaps in understanding, and illuminate next steps and opportunities for more comprehensive research that can inform clinical care.

Bio: Beth Pollack, Research Scientist, MIT

Beth Pollack is a Research Scientist in the Department of Biological Engineering in the Tal Research Group at MIT, where she leads research on ME/CFS and the overlaps among infection-associated chronic illnesses. Her work focuses on understudied pathologies that significantly impact patients, with the goal of accelerating knowledge, clinical research, and treatments. She is currently a collaborator on four clinical studies on infection-associated chronic illnesses, and also serves on two NIH RECOVER working groups focused on Long COVID therapeutics and clinical trial design.

Beth was chair of the NIH ME/CFS Research Roadmap subgroup on Less Studied Pathologies, was previously a senior researcher at Harvard, and in 2024 was named a United States Leader by the Obama Foundation. Committed to increasing understanding and awareness of chronic illness, she has been interviewed by The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Guardian, NPR, and other publications.