Dr. Karen Liu

Biography

Dr. Karen Liu is a professor in the Department of Computer Science at Stanford University. Prior to joining Stanford, she was a faculty member at the School of Interactive Computing at Georgia Tech. She received her Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Washington. Her research interests encompass computer graphics and robotics, with a specific focus on physics-based animation, character animation, optimal control, reinforcement learning, and computational biomechanics. Dr. Liu has developed computational approaches for modeling realistic natural human movements and learning complex control policies for humanoids and assistive robots, significantly advancing fundamental numerical simulation and optimal control algorithms. Her work has fostered interdisciplinary collaborations between researchers in robotics, computer graphics, mechanical engineering, biomechanics, neuroscience, and biology. Dr. Liu has received several prestigious awards including the National Science Foundation CAREER Award, the Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship, and was named one of the Young Innovators by Technology Review. In 2012, she was honored with the ACM SIGGRAPH Significant New Researcher Award for her contributions to the field of computer graphics.