Yusheng Liu

Born in Jingmen, Hubei, China
Studies & works in Champaign, Illinois, USA
yusheng8@illinois.edu

Education and training

PhD candidate
Hon. BS in Chemistry 
Summer intern 

UIUC
USTC
Princeton University

Aug 2021 - Present 
Aug 2016 - Jun 2020 
Jun 2019 – Aug 2019 

UIUC: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
USTC: University of Science and Technology of China

Selected awards and honors

  • Racheff-Intel Award
  • CCIL Graduate Cancer Scholarship Award 
  • Outstanding Graduate Award for Top Performance
  • Guo Moruo Scholarship (Top 1%)
  • Tang Lixin Scholarship (Top 5%)         
  • Overseas Research Scholarship  (Top 10%)

May 2025
Nov 2023
Jun 2020
Oct 2019
Oct 2019
Jun 2019

Patents

  • Wang H, Liu Y. Metabolic Tagging and Targeting of Red Blood Cells. U.S. Provisional Patent Application No. 63/402,413

Relevant skills

• Chemistry: Organic/inorganic synthesis, nanoparticle and bioconjugation chemistry, NMR, MS, HPLC, DLS, SEC. 
• Molecular Biology: PCR, cloning, protein expression/purification, RNA/protein analysis, CRISPR, proximity labeling. 
• Cell Biology: Flow cytometry, confocal/live-cell imaging, metabolic glycan & lipid labeling, stable cell line construction, ex vivo culture. 
• Animal Studies: Cancer, T1D, and EAE models; mouse surgery. 
• Computational Biology: RNA-seq (Salmon, STAR, DESeq2, Seurat), pathway enrichment, docking & MD (HADDOCK, GROMACS), AI-driven protein/RNA     design (RFdiffusion, proteinMPNN). 
• Visualization & Analysis: R, Python, GraphPad Prism, FlowJo, ImageJ, PyMOL, ChimeraX, VMD.
• Design & Communication: BioRender, Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop.

Teaching and mentoring

1. TA for MSE474 Biomaterials and Nanomedicine,  
2. TA for MSE457/CHEM480 Polymer Chemistry, 
3. Have mentored three undergraduate since 

Spring 2023 
Fall 2022
Fall 2021

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