Eberly alumna Leah Liu receives Penn State Alumni Achievement Award
Eberly alumna Leah Liu has been selected as one of seven recipients of the Penn State Alumni Association's 2023 Alumni Achievement Award. The award recognizes alumni 35 years of age and younger for their extraordinary professional accomplishments, demonstrating to students that Penn State alumni succeed in exceptional fashion at an early age. Recipients are nominated by an academic college or campus and invited to return to Penn State to share their expertise with students and the University community.
The Penn State Alumni Association will honor the awardees at the Alumni Achievement Awards Ceremony on Friday, March 17, at 6 p.m. The ceremony will be held at the State Theatre in downtown State College and can be viewed everywhere by livestream.
Liu is currently associate director of target biology at Korro Bio, Inc. in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where she leads a team responsible for applying new genetic technologies for the treatment of liver diseases. Korro Bio uses the cell’s natural RNA editing machinery to correct disease mutations and enhance protein function without permanently altering the genome.
Prior to Korro Bio, Leah began her biotech career as a scientist at Generation Bio, Inc., which focuses on developing durable, redosable gene therapies for rare and prevalent diseases. Leah pursued postdoctoral training at the Massachusetts General Hospital, funded by the American Cancer Society, where she investigated specific chromosome translocations in a biliary cancer called cholangiocarcinoma. Leah received her Ph.D. from Harvard Medical School, where she was awarded funding through the National Science Foundation and National Institutes of Health for research that uncovered new roles for cannabinoid receptor function during liver development and metabolism. Leah got her start in biological research as a Schreyer Honors Scholar in the lab of Professor Wendy Hanna-Rose in the Biochemistry and Molecular Biology department. While at Penn State, Leah was a Barry M. Goldwater Scholar and Astronaut Scholar. She graduated in 2009.
Throughout her training and career, Leah has been involved with mentoring programs and initiatives to enhance representation in the sciences, including the Mentoring with Honors program, as an alumni interviewer for the Schreyer Honors College, as well as locally within the Boston life sciences and biotech community.