Chenli Liu is Pengcheng Distinguished Professor and President of the Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology (SIAT), Chinese Academy of Sciences; Founding Director of the State Key Laboratory of Quantitative Synthetic Biology and the National Industrial Innovation Center for Biomanufacturing (NIICB); and Chief Scientist and Chief Engineer of the Shenzhen Infrastructure for Synthetic Biology. He obtained his Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the University of Hong Kong, and postdoctoral training at MCB, Harvard University. He started his lab at SIAT in 2014.

Liu lab is focused on bringing together concepts and approaches from synthetic biology together with quantitative biology. Current research interest includes synthesizing a cellular life from bottom up and engineering bacteria for solid tumor therapy. He initiated and spearheaded the development of the Shenzhen Infrastructure for Synthetic Biology and the China National Industrial Innovation Center for Biomanufacturing. He is the recipients of several prestigious awards, e.g. "Ho Leung Ho Lee Foundation Science and Technology Award", "C.C. Tan Life Science Innovation Award", "Agilent Thought Leader Award".

He was elected an Associate Member of the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) in 2026. He also serves as Co-chair of the Asian Synthetic Biology Association (ASBA), Country Ambassador for the American Society for Microbiology (ASM), Scientific Advisory Council Member of Applied and Environmental Microbiology (AEM) at ASM, Editor-in-Chief of Vita Synthesis, Executive Editor-in-Chief of Synthetic Biology Journal (Chinese), and Editorial Board Member of Vita, Molecular Systems Biology, and ACS Synthetic Biology. He is Executive Council Member of the Chinese Society of Biotechnology, Member of the Advisory Committee for the Department of Life Sciences, National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC), and Member of the Committee on Basic Sciences, Frontier and Interdisciplinary Research within the Academic Committee of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. He initiated the Synthetic Cell International Science Program of Chinese Academy of Sciences, launched the Synthetic Cell Global Summit (SynCell Global), and co-founded the Global Biofoundry Alliance (GBA).