Dr. Liu received the B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1988 and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University in 1994 and 1999, respectively. From 1988 to 1993 he was a member of the technical staff in the Advanced Development Group at Acuson Inc., where he played a key role in the development of the Sequoia ultrasound system. While at Stanford, he developed a network of remote monitoring stations to measure ultra-low-frequency magnetic fields along earthquake faults in the San Francisco Bay area. In recognition of his commitment to research and teaching at Stanford, he received the Gerald J. Lieberman Fellowship in 1997. He joined the UCSD faculty in 2001 and was one of the founding members of the UCSD Center for Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (CFMRI). From 2001-2007, he served as Associate Director of Imaging Software at CFMRI. He became the Director of the CFMRI in 2007.

Dr Liu’s research focuses on the following areas: 1) Design and analysis of experiments for functional MRI (fMRI), with an emphasis on statistical optimization, nonlinear signal processing, and physiological noise reduction; (2) Characterization and modeling of the hemodynamic response to neural activity, including the effects of drugs such as caffeine; (3) The development of novel imaging methods to measure cerebral blood flow and volume; (4) Characterization of cerebral blood flow in Alzheimer’s disease and glaucoma; and (5) Investigation of resting-state brain connectivity with multi-modal imaging approaches.