Liu graduated from the University of California, Berkeley in 1984, and earned a Ph.D. in 1989 from Cornell University under the supervision of Michael Fisher.[1][3] After postdoctoral studies at Exxon and the University of California, Santa Barbara, she joined the faculty at the University of California, Los Angeles in 1993, and moved to the University of Pennsylvania in 2004. She became the Edmund J. and Louise W. Kahn Professor in the Natural Sciences in 2009,[3] before becoming the Hepburn Professor in 2011.[4]