Prof. Chenli Liu is a Pengcheng Distinguished Professor in Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology (SIAT), Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Vice President of SIAT, the Founding Director of National Industrial Innovation Center for Biomanufacturing (NIICB), the Founding Director of Shenzhen Institute of Synthetic Biology (iSynBio), the Founding Director of CAS Key Laboratory for Quantitative Engineering Biology, the Chief Scientist of Shenzhen Infrastructure for Synthetic Biology (infraSynBio).

Liu also serves as the Executive Editor-in-Chief of Synthetic Biology Journal (Chinese), Associate Editor of Engineering Biology, and mLife, and as Editorial Advisory Board member of the journals ACS Synthetic Biology, Systems and Synthetic Biotechnology, Quantitative Biology, Journal of Genetics and Genomics.

Liu obtained a Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the University of Hong Kong, and postdoctoral training in MCB, Harvard University. Liu started his own lab at SIAT in 2014. Over the years, his group made major contributions in elucidating the evolutionarily stable strategy to colonize spatially extended habitats and the interconnections between bacterial cell growth, DNA replication, and cell division.

For his distinguished work, he received several prestigious awards, e.g. "Agilent Thought Leader Award", “C.C. Tan Life Science Innovation Award”, "Young Scientists Award of the Chinese Academy of Sciences", "Excellent Mentor Award of the Chinese Academy of Sciences", "VCANBIO Award for Biosciences and Medicine", "Li Ka Shing Award", "Hong Kong Young Scientist Award", etc.

The research area of his lab includes Synthetic Quantitative Microbiology, SynBio Tumor Therapy, Synthetic Pattern Formation, Directed Evolution System. Recently, the Liu lab expanded their interests to Synthetic Cell Studies, striving to construct a synthetic cell using defined biological macromolecules through bottom-up methodologies.