Nian Liu completed his B.S. at the University of Science and Technology of China in 2010 and earned his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 2015. Liu then pursued postdoctoral research at Stanford University from 2015 to 2019. He became an assistant professor at Tsinghua University in 2019 and was promoted to associate professor in 2022. Liu’s research centres on transposons and how they influence embryonic development, neurogenesis, and various diseases. Utilising both wet and dry lab techniques, his lab explores transposon regulation and their functional roles in development and disease, alongside RNA regulation. He has published extensively in journals including Nature Genetics, Molecular Cell, and Nature. Liu has received several accolades, such as the Benyuan Fund Young Investigator Exploration Fellowship (2024) and the Bayer Investigator Award (2020).