Ying Liu, PhD ‘11, is building the future of technology as a software engineer at Google.
His success in the technology world began with his decision to enroll in the Joint Carnegie Mellon-University of Pittsburgh PhD Program in Computational Biology (CPCB).
Liu was pursuing his master’s degree in software engineering at Tsinghua University in the early 2000s, when rapid changes in technology sparked his interest in the field.
“I saw at the time because of the advancement of information technology, a lot of the traditional disciplines were seeing the prospect of leveraging computational powers and algorithms to improve their understanding,” Liu said. “I was very interested in this emerging field.”
This desire to expand his knowledge led him to apply to computational biology programs in the United States. He accepted an offer from Pitt, a decision that would shape his career.
“A great advantage of the PhD program was the joint effort between Pitt and CMU, which doubled the opportunities that ordinary graduate students get to enjoy like access to double the resources from both schools,” he said.
The training he received as a CPCB student honed his storytelling skills for research. Liu recalls participating in journal clubs, which guided him through the process of creating an engaging research paper and presenting his findings to an audience.
“How to tell a story is really important,” he said. “You can’t just throw a bunch of data at people. You need to narrate your research process.”
Building a Technology Career
Liu found his niche in the technology sector after graduation. He began as a staff scientist at the tech startup Opera Solutions in San Diego. Then, he transitioned to a business analytics role at LinkedIn. Liu landed his current job as a software engineer at Google in 2015.
Computational biology inspired one of Liu’s recent projects. He needed to understand a complex system, Google Search, using a manageable approach. He was inspired by micro-array analysis, a technique he remembered from his PhD training. A micro-array analysis allows scientists to perform experiments on thousands of genes at the same time, and Liu applied a similar technique to Google Search data.
“There are a lot of moving pieces in Google Search, some of which dated back to years ago.” Liu said. “I wanted to know which of them are still relevant today so we can clean up the system and make it more efficient. This is much like investigating the relation between genotype and phenotype in an organism.”
For his innovative work on this project, Liu received a promotion.
“The methodology to approach complex problems in a scientific way is one of the most important things I got out of my PhD program,” he said.
Paying Knowledge Forward
Liu remembers what it was like to be a graduate student seeking advice from team members in his lab. He believes in investing in people and sharing knowledge with younger generations.
“My advice to prospective PhD students is to find the passion to sustain their studies,” he said. “Try and build the foundational skill set, like presentation, communication and technical skills, which are critical for their future careers.”