Jen Liou, Ph.D.
Titles and Appointments
Associate Professor
- Endowed Title
- Sowell Family Scholar in Medical Research
- School
- Medical School
- Department
- Physiology
- Graduate Programs
- Cell and Molecular Biology
Dr. Jen Liou received her PhD in Microbiology and Immunology from University of California at San Francisco (UCSF), under the mentorship of Dr. Arthur Weiss, for her work on dissecting signaling transduction events in lymphocyte activation using biochemical and genetic approaches. During her postdoctoral training under Dr. Tobias Meyer at Stanford University, Dr. Liou studied cellular signaling using systems biology and quantitative live-cell imaging approaches.
She collaborated with four colleagues and generated an siRNA library targeting 2,304 human signaling proteins. She used this library to address a long-standing question in lymphocyte activation and calcium signaling: the molecular mechanism underlying store-operated calcium (SOC) signaling.
Dr. Liou identified STIM1/2 as the calcium sensors in the endoplasmic reticulum for SOC signaling and characterized the activation mechanisms of STIM1/2. Her work represented a major breakthrough that set the direction of many laboratories in the field.
An article in the Summer 2009 edition of Stanford Medicine, "Anatomy of an Experiment: Chasing Down the Cell’s Gatekeepers" describes Dr. Liou’s research.
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