Zhe J. Liu, PhD (hear my name) joined Johns Hopkins University in 2026 with joint appointments in the Department of Biophysics & Biophysical Chemistry in the School of Medicine and the Department of Biomedical Engineering in the Whiting School of Engineering. Previously, he was a Group Leader at the Janelia Research Campus of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

Zhe received his bachelor's degree from Tsinghua University in China and his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley, where he studied the transcriptional regulation of stem cell pluripotency under the mentorship of Robert Tjian.

Following his doctoral studies, Zhe joined Janelia as an independent fellow, where he collaborated with the Transcription Imaging Consortium to develop quantitative imaging methods for studying molecular dynamics in living cells. In 2015, he established his own laboratory focused on developing new ways to visualize biological organization across scales. His research integrates single-molecule imaging, 3D super-resolution genome imaging, and deep-tissue spatial omics to understand how molecular dynamics and spatial organization shape gene regulation, cell state, and tissue function.

Fun fact: Zhe is an avid fly fisherman, a skill and hobby he picked up from his PhD advisor, Robert Tjian, while fishing in the pond next to the Landscape Building at Janelia Research Campus.