Brian B. Liau
Associate Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology
liau (at) chemistry (dot) harvard (dot) edu

Brian grew up in Belmont, MA and graduated from Harvard College in 2007, conducting undergraduate research with EJ Corey. He later received his Ph.D. in Chemistry with Matthew Shair at Harvard Chemistry and Chemical Biology (CCB), where he worked on the total synthesis of complex natural products and later studied their mechanisms of action. Brian was then a postdoctoral fellow with Bradley Bernstein at Massachusetts General Hospital, where he investigated epigenetic mechanisms of adaptation and drug resistance in brain cancer. Brian started his independent lab at Harvard CCB in 2016.

The lab’s work in chemical genomics has been recognized by the Milton Fund, an NIH Director’s New Innovator Award, an Ono Pharma Breakthrough Science Initiative Award, a Star Family Prize for Excellence in Faculty Advising, a Damon Runyon-Rachleff Innovation Award, an American Cancer Society Research Scholar Grant, a Camille-Dreyfus Teacher Scholar Award, a Sloan Research Fellowship in Chemistry, an NIH NIGMS Maximizing Investigators’ Research Award, and the Eli Lilly Award in Biological Chemistry.