ABSTRACT: Biological membranes are involved in many cellular processes, including cell migration, membrane trafficking, and cell signaling. A significant amount of work has elucidated the types of molecular machinery that regulate dynamic membrane-based processes. In parallel, there has been growing interest in recent years in trying to understand how the mechanical state of the cells is utilized as a regulatory input to control cellular processes. My lab is broadly interested in studying the mechanochemical responses and force generation of biological systems, both in cells and in cell-like systems. In this talk, I will introduce broadly my lab’s research and share three vignettes related to my lab’s research theme.

BIOSKETCH: Allen Liu received a B.Sc. degree in Biochemistry (Honors) from the University of British Columbia in 2001. He obtained his Ph.D. in Biophysics in 2007 from the University of California-Berkeley and received his post-doctoral training at The Scripps Research Institute-La Jolla. He started his group in 2012, and he is currently a Professor in Mechanical Engineering, Biomedical Engineering, and Biophysics at the University of Michigan. His current research interests lie in cellular mechanotransduction and bottom-up synthetic biology, and his lab uses tools from quantitative cell biology, synthetic biology, biophysics, and microfluidics. He has received the NIH Director’s New Innovator Award, a Young Innovator by Cellular and Molecular Bioengineering (CMBE), a Rising Star from CMBE-Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES), and a Future of Biophysics Burroughs Wellcome Fund Symposium speaker. He is an elected Fellow of the BMES, and a recipient of the Endeavour Executive Fellowship (Australia) and the Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship for Experienced Researcher (Germany).