Research Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering
Education
Biography
Dr. Liu is a Research Assistant Professor at Alfred E. Mann Department of Biomedical Engineering USC since 2023. Before that, he finished his postdoctoral training at University of California, San Diego (UCSD, 2019-2022). He holds a Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering from Tsinghua University, China (2018).
Dr. Liu has published nine first-author papers in high-impact journals such as Nature Materials (2017), PNAS (2020), Nature Communications (2021), with an additional first-author paper currently in revision at Cell. In addition, he has multiple co-corresponding author papers in The EMBO Journal (2022), Clinical and Translational Medicine (2022), and ACS Nano (2024) et.al, and co-author papers Nature Reviews Bioengineering (2023), Nature Materials (2022), Biomaterials (2016, 2017) et.al, two book chapters, among others.
Dr. Longwei Liu has received several prestigious awards, including the NIH Mentored Career Development Award (K01 award), the Ming Hsieh Institute Research Award (MHIRA award) and SBIR/STTR Planning Award from USC. He has also been recognized with the Outstanding Thesis Award, Outstanding Ph.D. Graduate Award from Tsinghua University, the National Scholarship (Ph.D.), and multiple other scholarships. Dr. Liu serve as the CMBE section chair of the 2024 BMES annual meeting and as a trainee organizing committee member for the International Symposium on Biomolecular Ultrasound and Sonogenetics (ISBUS, 2022). He has taught guest lectures in courses such as DSR 542 (2024), SCRM 525 (2023 & 2024), BME 533 (2023) at USC, and BE-230A (2022) at UCSD.
Research Summary
Dr. Longwei Liu specializes in immunoengineering and molecular engineering of biosensors for live-cell imaging. His research focuses on developing tools for understanding and manipulating genetic and molecular activities in live cells and animals. Specifically, he develops genetically encoded biosensors based on FRET or single fluorescent proteins using a directed evolution approach to visualize molecular signals in live cells with high spatiotemporal resolution. Guided by these new signaling insights, he also develops "smart" inducible immune cells that can be precisely controlled by focused ultrasound while maintaining high efficacy for cancer treatment. This ultrasound control technology is further used to control CRISPR-toolboxes for treating genetic disorders. These genetic manipulation tools aim to rewire cellular functions both in vitro and in vivo, with accompanying signaling landscape dynamics revealed by genetically encoded biosensors and live-cell imaging. This combination of cell signaling observation and manipulation deepens the understanding of cellular networks, bridges the gap between observational biology and actionable therapeutics, and paves the way for innovative cell manipulation methodologies.
Awards
- 2024 NIH Mentored Career Development Award (K01)
- 2024 USC SBIR/STTR Planning Award
- 2023 USC Ming Hsieh Institute Research Award
- 2023 USC SBIR/STTR Planning Award
- 2018 The Outstanding Thesis Award
- 2018 The Outstanding Ph.D. Graduate
- 2018 The Outstanding Graduate of Beijing City
- 2017 National Scholarship (Ph.D.)
- 2016 Guanghua Scholarship
- 2015 Scholarship for Excellent Student
- 2012 National Scholarship (B.S.)
- 2010 Outstanding Student Scholarship
