David R. Liu is professor of chemistry and chemical biology at Harvard University, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) investigator, and a core institute member and vice chair of the faculty at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. Liu’s research integrates chemistry and evolution to illuminate and program biology. His major research interests include the evolution and intracellular delivery of proteins with next-generation therapeutic potential; the development and application of genome-editing proteins; and the discovery of therapeutically relevant synthetic molecules and synthetic polymers through DNA-templated organic synthesis, an approach developed in his laboratory.

Liu graduated first in his class at Harvard with a bachelor's degree in chemistry before entering the Ph.D. program at U.C. Berkeley. He performed research on sterol biosynthesis under Professor E. J. Corey's guidance throughout his undergraduate years. In the group of Professor Peter Schultz, Liu initiated the first general effort to expand the genetic code in living cells. He earned his Ph.D. in 1999 and became assistant professor of chemistry and chemical biology at Harvard University in the same year. He was promoted to associate professor in 2003 and to full professor in 2005. Liu was also appointed as a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator in 2005 and joined the JASONs, academic advisors to the U.S. government on science and technology, in 2009.

Liu has earned several university-wide distinctions for undergraduate and graduate student teaching at Harvard, including the Joseph R. Levenson Memorial Teaching Prize in 2007, the Roslyn Abramson Award in 2003, and a Harvard College Professorship in 2007. Liu has published more than 130 papers in chemical biology, molecular biology, and organic chemistry. His research accomplishments have earned distinctions including the American Chemical Society Pure Chemistry Award and the American Chemical Society Arthur C. Cope Young Scholar Award.
 

Photo credit: Martin Adolfsson