Research Highlights
ABOUT THE LIU LAB
The Jia Liu Group at Harvard is dedicated to pioneering disruptive technologies that enable a seamless fusion of electronics with biological systems across all scales. Our focus is on the development of novel, tissue-compatible electronic materials and devices and the application of semiconductor chip fabrication techniques to create scalable brain-computer and human-machine interfaces at cellular level. Our work integrates advanced soft electronics with biological structures, ranging from molecular to tissue, and up to the whole organ level, establishing a versatile cyborg technology platform. Additionally, we are combining soft bioelectronics with state-of-the-art spatial biology tools to construct multimodal spatial biological techniques, complementing by our advanced computational platforms, creating functional spatial atlases of various organs. Our overarching goal is to synergize these technologies and insights with artificial intelligence, facilitating a seamless integration of natural and machine intelligence for a bio-symbolic future.
To achive this, we bring together experts in fields including bioengineering, electrical engineering, chemistry, bioinformatics, computer science, and materials science and mechanical engineering, to develop scalable bioelectronics platform techniques using a combination of nanoelectronics, soft materials, and genetic engineering with semiconductor industry compatible lithographic techniques. We aim to integrate these scalable bioelectronics with cyborg engineering, single-cell genomics, and imaging and computational analysis to seamlessly combine electronics and biology, integrating machine and natural intelligence.
Using this platform technique, we aim to build tools capable of tracking and controlling the multimodal activities of individual cells within living organisms and behaving animals, with cell-type specificity, across time and space from a statistically significant number of cells. Using our specialized experimental and computational expertise, we aim to understand the relationship between the population dynamics of single-cell multimodal physiology and gene expression and the functions and dysfunctions of whole organs and organisms. Our research addresses questions in the field of brain-computer interfaces, neuroengineering, stem cell engineering, cardiac diseases, and developmental disorders.
Our research group recruits Ph.D. students interested in the following areas:
- Nanoelectronics and bioelectronics: electronic material development, nanofabrication, nanoelectronics, bioelectronics, and soft electronics
- Biochemistry and bioimaging: biochemistry, bioimaging, single-cell genomics and transcriptomics, and genetic engineering
- AI for bioengineering: electrical engineering, data science, and computer science
We welcome Ph.D. students from all related programs at Harvard and MIT to apply.
We have special positions for Masters and Ph.D. students who are working in the fields of artificial intelligence, machine learning, statistics, bioinformatics, computational neuroscience, and general computational biology.
RECENT NEWS AND PUBLICATIONS
NEWS |
SELECTED RECENT PUBLICATIONS |
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01/31/2024: Congratulations to PhD candidate Arnau Marin Llobet for two fellowships he has received recently. Royal Colegio Complutense (RCCHU) Fellowship and NeuroPAC fellowship for his work in the field of brain-machine interfaces, with a special emphasis on harmonizing artificial and natural intelligence. Click here for the news story. 6/29/2022 : Jia Liu has been selected as one of MIT Technology Review's 2022 35 Innovators Under 35 for his contributions to flexible and soft electronics for brain-machine interface. Please click here for the news story.
2/7/2022 : Jia Liu has been granted the Advanced Materials Rising Star Award 2022. 1/13/2022 : Congratulations to PhD graduate student, Xin Tang, for receiving the Teaching Q Award: Distinction and Excellence in Teaching of Introduction to Bioelectronics. 11/29/2021 and 12/01/2021: Congratulations to PhD graduate Paul Le Floch for two outstanding achievements he has received this week: On November 29, 2021, Paul received the Materials Research Society (MRS) Graduate Student Gold Award at the 2021 MRS Fall Meeting. On December 1, 2021, Paul was named to the Forbes 30 under 30 | 2022 Science list! Click here for the news story.
11/05/2021: We are extremely grateful to receive the Young Investigator Program (YIP) Award from Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) to support our work! 9/17/2021: We are incredibly grateful to receive the NIH/NIDDK Catalyst Award from NIH DP1 Pioneer Award Program to support our work! 9/01/2021: We are excited to launch a startup from our lab, Axoft Inc., led by PhD graduate, Paul Le Floch, to revolutionize the brain-machine interface by making implantable electronics as soft as the brain. The Engine is leading the investment. https://engine.xyz/founders/axoft/ 8/20/2021: We welcome new graduate student Ariel Lee to the lab. Ariel has received the NSF Graduate Research Fellowships Program. Congratulations! 6/16/2021: First graduate student from our group, Paul Le Floch, successfully defended his Ph.D. Congratulations!!! 6/1/2021: The Bio-integration lab of Harvard Liu Lab has been moved to the Harvard new Engineering Campus, Science and Engineering Complex (SEC, https://youtu.be/a2kIFoa5Iuc), featuring state-of-the-art facilities for Bioengineering, Computer Science, Data Science, and Robotics. Our Electronics lab will be kept in Harvard Cambridge Campus with the Harvard Center for Nanoscale Systems. 5/1/2021: We welcome new graduate students Yichun He and Jaeyong Lee to the lab. Yichun has received the James Mills Peirce Fellowship from the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, Harvard University. Jaeyong has received a fellowship from Kwanjeong Education Foundation. Congratulations! 3/25/2021: Jia Liu has been awarded a LInc Faculty Fellowship for the 2021-2022 academic year. Many thanks to The Learning Incubator at Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences for this fellowship. 2/2/2021: The group receives a two-year seed award in collaboration with Harvard University's Materials Research Science and Engineering Center to support the bioelectronics research. We are grateful to the NSF for their support. 1/11/2021: Emma Bou Hanna and Sebastian Partarrieu, both from Mines ParisTech, join the lab as Visiting Undergraduate Research Interns, welcome! 10/16/2020: Jia Liu has been awarded the William F. Milton Award. We are grateful to Harvard's Office of the Vice Provost for Research for this award. 9/30/2020: Jia Liu has been invited to join the Harvard Brain Science Initiative. We appreciate the support from the Initiative. 9/3/2020: Bridget O'Kelly and Kazi Tasnim from Harvard College join the lab as undergraduate researchers, welcome! 9/2/2020: The group receives an NSF CPS award to support the collaborative work on AI, nanoelectronics, and stem cell biology. We are grateful to the NSF for their support. 8/25/2020: The group receives an NIH R01 grant to support the cyborg organoids research. We are grateful to NIH for their support. 7/1/2020: Daniel Solomon has been awarded Harvard College Research Program Fellowship. Congratulations! 5/1/2020: Jia Liu has been awarded a Harvard Stem Cell Institute 2020 Seed Grant Award for his cyborg organoids project. We are grateful to the Institute for their support.
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P. Le Floch, S. Zhao, R. Liu, N. Molinari, E. Medina, H. Shen, Z. Wang, J. Kim, H. Sheng, S. Partarrieu, W. Wang, C. Sessler, G. Zhang, H. Park, X. Gong, A. Spencer, J. Lee, T. Ye, X. Tang, X. Wang, K. Bertoldi, N. Lu, B. Kozinsky, Z. Suo and J. Liu*, “3D spatiotemporally scalable in vivo neural probes based on fluorinated elastomers,” Nature Nanotechnology 19, 319–329 (2024). Research highlight in Nature Nanotechnology, "Soft high-density neural probes enable stable single-neuron recordings". H. Shi, Y. He, Y. Zhou, J. Huang, K. Maher, B. Wang, Z. Tang, S. Luo, P. Tian, M. Wu, Z. Lin, J. Ren, Y. Thapa, X. Tang, K. Y. Chan, B. E. Deverman, H. Shen, A. Liu, J. Liu* and X. Wang*, “Spatial atlas of the mouse central nervous system at molecular resolution,” Nature 622, 552-561 (2023). Cover and Perspective highlight in Nature as part of collection for whole mouse brain spatial atlas, "BRAIN Initiative Cell Census Network 2.0 – Whole Mouse Brain".
Q. Li, Z. Lin, R. Liu, X. Tang, J. Huang, Y. He, X. Sui, W. Tian, H. Shen, H. Zhou, H. Sheng, H. Shi, L. Xiao, X. Wang* and J. Liu*, “Multimodal charting of molecular and functional cell states via in situ electro-sequencing,” Cell 186, P2002-20017.E21 (2023). Cover highlight in Cell; Perspective highlight in Nature Methods, “In situ electro-sequencing”.
X. Tang, J. Zhang, Y. He, X. Zhang, Z. Lin, S. Partarrieu, E. B. Hanna, Z. Ren, H. Shen, Y. Yang, X. Wang, N. Li, J. Ding* and J. Liu*, “Explainable multi-task learning for multi-modality biological data analysis,” Nature Communications 14, 2546 (2023). Editor highlights in Biotechnology and Methods and Computational Science. Z. Lin, J.C. Garbern, R. Liu, Q. Li, E.M. Juncosa, H.L.T. Elwell, M. Sokol, J. Aoyama, U.-S. Deumer, E. Hsiao, H. Sheng, R.T. Lee*, and J. Liu*. “Tissue-embedded stretchable nanoelectronics reveal endothelial cell-mediated electrical maturation of human 3D cardiac microtissues.” Science Advances 9, eade8513 (2023). Please click here for the news story. S. Zhao, X. Tang, W. Tian, S. Partarrieu, R. Liu, H. Shen, J. Lee, J. Lee, S. Guo, Z. Lin, and J. Liu*. “Tracking neural activity from the same cells during the entire adult life of mice.” Nature Neuroscience 26, 696-710 (2023). Please click here for the news story. X. Tang, H. Shen, S. Zhao, N. Li, and J. Liu*. "Flexible brain-computer interfaces" Nature Electronics, 6, 109-118(2023). For editorial comments from Nature Electronics, please see here. Selected for inclusion in Nature special collection on AI and robots "Powering up". Highlighted in the Issue of Technology of Year 2023 by Nature Electronics. C.D. Sessler, Y. Zhou, W. Wang, N.D. Hartley, Z. Fu, D. Graykowski, M. Sheng, X. Wang*, and J. Liu*. "Optogenetic polymerization and assembly of electrically functional polymers for modulation of single-neuron excitability." Science Advances 8, eade1136 (2022). Please click here for the full article. Please click here for the news story.
P. Le Floch, Q. Li, Z. Lin, S. Zhao, R. Liu, K. Tasnim, H. Jiang, and J. Liu*. “Stretchable mesh nanoelectronics for three-dimensional single-cell chronic electrophysiology from developing brain organoids.” Advanced Materials. 34, 2106829 (2022). Please click here for the full article. Please click here for the news story.
He Y, Tang T, Huang J, Ren J, Zhou H, Chen K, Liu A, Shi H, Lin Z, Li Q, Aditham A, Ounadjela J, Grody EI, Shu J, Liu J*, Wang X*. “ClusterMap for multi-scale clustering analysis of spatial gene expression. Nature Communications 12, 5909 (2021). https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-26044-x Please click here for the news story. Liu J, Wang J, Zhang Z, Molina-Lopez F, Wang G-JN, Schroeder BC, Yan X, Zeng Y, Zhao O, Tran H, Lei T, Lu Y, Wang YX, Tok JB-H, Dauskardt R, Chung J, Yun Y, Bao Z. Fully stretchable active-matrix organic light-emitting electrochemical cell array. Nature Communications 11, 3362 (2020) https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-17084-w. Liu J, Zhang X, Liu Y, Rodrigo M, Loftus PD, Aparicio-Valenzuela J, Zheng J, Pong T, Cyr KJ, Babakhanian M, Hasi J, Li J, Jiang Y, Kenney CJ, Wang PJ, Lee AM, Bao Z. Intrinsically stretchable electrode array enabled in vivo electrophysiological mapping of atrial fibrillation at cellular resolution. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 117, 14769-14778 (2020) https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2020/06/10/2000207117. Liu J, Kim Y, Richardson C, Tom A, Ramakrishnan C, Birey F, Katsumata T, Chen S, Wang C, Wang X, Joubert L-M, Jiang Y, Wang H, Fenno L, Tok B-HJ, Pasca S, Shen K, Bao Z, Deisseroth K. Genetically targeted chemical assembly of functional materials in living cells, tissues, and animals. Science 367, 1372-1376 (2020). https://science.sciencemag.org/content/367/6484/1372.full. For two perspectives on this publication from Science, please see article by K.J. Otto and C.E. Schmidt and article by S. Mao. For perspective and highlight on this publication from Nature Methods, please see article by Nina Vogt. Le Floch, P., N. Molinari, K. Nan, S. Zhang, B. Kozinsky, Z. Suo and J. Liu*. Fundamental limits to the electrochemical impedance stability of dielectric elastomers in bioelectronics. Nano Letters 20, 224-233 (2020) https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.nanolett.9b03705. Li, Q., K. Nan, P. LeFloch, Z. Lin, H. Sheng, T.S. Blum and J. Liu*. Cyborg organoids: Implantation of nanoelectronics via organogenesis for tissue-wide electrophysiology. Nano Letters 19, 5781-5789 (2019) https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.nanolett.9b02512. Please click here for the Harvard Gazette news item about this, and click here for Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences news item. For more press on this article, please go to our Press page.
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