James C. Liao, PhD （廖俊智院長）
Parsons Foundation Professor
Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering
University of California, Los Angeles
President of Academia Sinica, Taiwan
Dr. James C. Liao is a well-known expert in metabolic engineering, synthetic biology and systems biology. He obtained his B.S degree from the National Taiwan University in 1980 and received his Ph.D. degree at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1987. He was in industry shortly as a research scientist at the Eastman Kodak Company before he moved to Texas A&M University in 1990. In 1997, Dr. Liao joined the faculty of UCLA in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering. His group uses metabolic engineering, synthetic biology, and systems biology to construct microorganisms to produce next generation biofuels and to alter metabolites for the treatment of metabolic disorders. His group is also interested in developing computational and mathematical tools for investigating metabolism and guiding engineering design. He was elected Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering and has received numerous awards including the NSF Young Investigator Award, Merck Award for Metabolic Engineering, FPBE Division award of American Institute of Chemical Engineers, Charles Thom Award of the Society for Industrial Microbiology, Marvin J. Johnson Award of the American Chemical Society, Alpha Chi Sigma Award of AIChE, James E. Bailey Award of the Society for Biological Engineering, and Presidential Green Chemistry Challenge Award. James Liao was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2013 and to the National Academy of Sciences in 2015. He is also a member of Academia Sinica since 2014 and he has been appointed the 11th president of Academia Sinica in 2016.