She received her Ph.D. degree in Computer Science from the University of Washington in 2005. Liu's research interests are in computer graphics and animation, including physics-based animation, character animation, numerical methods, robotics and computational biomechanics. She develops computational models of human and animal motion and applies them to build tools to facilitate scientists, engineers, and artists to model, simulate, and design natural motion. Liu received National Science Foundation CAREER Award, Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship, and was named Young Innovators Under 35 by Technology Review. In 2012, Liu received the ACM SIGGRAPH Significant New Researcher Award for her contribution in the field of computer graphics.