Liang Gao received his B.S. and M.S. degree from Tsinghua University in 2000 and 2003. He received his Ph.D. degree with R. Graham Cooks from Purdue University in 2009. He did his postdoctoral research with Eric Betzig at the Janelia Research Campus of Howard Hughes Medical Institute from 2010 to 2013. He was an assistant professor at the State University of New York at Stony Brook from 2014 to 2016, a lead research scientist at Intelligent Imaging Innovations, Inc. from 2017 to 2018, and an associate professor at Westlake University from 2019 to 2024.