Jen Liou, PhD
Jen Liou studied lymphocyte activation and graduated with a Ph.D. from the University of California, San Francisco, USA. She conducted her postdoctoral research at Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, USA, where she identified STIM1 and STIM2 as the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) Ca2+ sensors for the store-operated Ca2+ entry (SOCE) pathway. In addition, she demonstrated that STIM1 dynamically localizes to ER-plasma membrane (PM) contact sites to activate SOCE following ER Ca2+ depletion. Dr. Liou received an Endowed Scholar Award and joined the faculty of UT Southwestern in 2009. Research in her lab is focused on signaling at ER-PM contact sites. Her lab has pioneered approaches to study these submicrometer-sized contact sites using live-cell, super- and high-resolution microscopy as well as proteomic analysis. Dr. Liou’s lab has since identified several new proteins including E-Syt1 and Nir2 that localize at ER-PM contact sites to regulate lipid homeostasis. Overall, her studies have opened up many new research directions including development of markers for investigating contact sites formed between the ER and other organelles, identification of novel functions at ER-PM contact sites, and characterization of crosstalk between ER-PM contact sites and various cytoskeletons.