Judy Liu

Judy Shih-Hwa Liu is the Miller Family Distinguished University Chair in Neurological Disease at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. She works on the cortical malformations that cause epilepsy.

Education and early career Liu earned a Bachelor of Science at Yale University. She moved to New York for her graduate studies, and completed a PhD and MD at Albert Einstein College of Medicine. She investigates surgically removed tissues and found that they are influenced by circadian rhythm. The protein CLOCK (Circadian Locomotor Output Cycles Kaput) is a transcription factor that is important in regulating circadian rhythm in the suprachiasmatic nucleus. Liu analyzed the transcriptome of surgically removed tissues and found differences in the RNA of CLOCK. She created mouse models, one with neurons defunct in CLOCK and the other with neurons lacking inhibitory cells. She contributed to the 2012 book Jasper's Basic Mechanisms of the Epilepsies.

She was awarded the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation NASRAD Young Investigator Award and a Whitehall Foundation grant to study the cell biology that underlies the development of axons. In 2013, she was awarded a grant to study the molecular mechanisms that prevent the initiation of seizures. The grant aims to identify changes in mRNA and microRNA in people who suffer from cortical dysplasia and tuberous sclerosis.