Assistant Professor Department of Chemistry

Dr. Yuzhong Liu obtained her PhD degree in Chemistry from University of California, Berkeley studying dynamic porous materials for carbon capture. In 2018, she started her postdoctoral research at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory focusing on the sustainable production of complex natural products through heterologous pathway expression in microbial hosts. In particular, she achieved the complete biosynthesis of QS-21 in engineered yeast, which remains the only saponin-based vaccine adjuvant approved by the FDA. Yuzhong started her independent career at The Scripps Research Institution in August 2023 and her lab focuses on the biosynthesis of complex natural and unnatural glycosides to advance vaccine development.