Chenli Liu

Chenli Liu is a Professor in Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology (SIAT), Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the Director of the Center for Synthetic Biology Engineering Research of SIAT. Liu received his B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from Xiamen University, where he isolated, identified, and characterized several novel marine oil-degraders and their key degrading enzyme genes. He obtained a Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the University of Hong Kong, where he described a synthetic genetic circuit that couples cell density and motility to form periodic stripe patterns; he also studied the mechanisms responsible for beneficial cerebrovascular effects of Salvia miltiorrhiza, and for the cell death caused by the single-stranded oligodeoxynucleotides mediated gene therapy. He obtained his postdoctoral training in Nancy Kleckner’s lab in MCB, Harvard University, where he worked on RNA’s roles in chromosome organization. His current research interest focuses on bacterial cell cycle, therapeutic synthetic biology, and continuous directed evolution. He also is the recipients of several prestigious awards, e.g. “1000 Young Scholar Plan”, “Guangdong Natural Science Foundation for Distinguished Young Scholars”, and “Hong Kong Young Scientist Award”.