Dr. Robert LiuAssociate Director, CMBCProfessor, Department of BiologyAffiliate Scientist, National Primate Research Center

Dr. Robert C. Liu is a Professor in the Department of Biology at Emory University. He received his PhD in Applied Physics from Stanford University for his theoretical and experimental work in condensed matter physics before transitioning into neuroscience as a Sloan Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of California, San Francisco’s Center for Theoretical Neurobiology. He trained in sensory systems and computational neuroscience, and began studying neural plasticity in the auditory system as vocal communication sounds gain meaning. At Emory University, his Computational Neuroethology Laboratory focuses on understanding the neurobiology and neural coding underlying social information processing and learning by using computational, electrophysiological, optogenetic, neurochemical, and behavioral methods to investigate natural social behaviors in rodents.

His research has expanded from acoustic communication in mice to pair bonding in prairie voles. His physics and neuroscience research has been published in journals like Nature, Science, Neuron, PLoS Biology and Journal of Neuroscience, and he has been funded by the NIH since 2001. He is active in the neuroscience community, having served as program chair for several national and international meetings, as an advisory committee member for the French neuroscience institute, NeuroPSI, and as a standing member of an NIH study section on audition.