Acting as Lab Manager for the Wine Research Centre at The University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, Lixin Liu possesses more than two decades of valuable research experience. He completed a Bachelor of Science in Horticulture at Nanjing Agricultural University in Nanjing, China, in 1989. During his training in China, Lixin Liu was a Research Technician in Seed Sales Operations until 1996, at the Institute of Vegetables and Flowers (IVF) for the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences in Beijing, China. Working for the IVF’s ornamental species breeding program, he investigated tissue culture as well as embryo development. He also spent one year facilitating sales and distribution of the company’s vegetable seeds. Seizing an opportunity to pursue further training in the United States, Lixin Liu completed his Master of Science in Plant Molecular Biology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1999. During this time, he worked to identify Arabidopsis by subtractive and selective polymerase chain reaction (PCR). While studying weed species, he identified mutations in the plants that displayed herbicide resistance through cloning and gene sequencing. Taking on another important study with Pioneer Hi-Bred, Lixin Liu served the Des Moines, Iowa, company as a Research Associate, constructing hundreds of vectors for gene transformation as well as protein expression, which is used by researchers to measure the presence of certain proteins in a cell or tissue. Prior to joining The University of British Columbia, Lixin Liu served as an Associate Scientist with international chemical company BASF Plant Science in Ames, Iowa. In his personal time, Lixin Liu plays volleyball and goes hiking. Lixin Liu enjoys many American writers, and is a fan of Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind, as well as For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway.
