Zhiru Liu

Hi there! I’m a PhD student in the Applied Physics department at Stanford University. My advisor is Benjamin Good. Broadly speaking, my research interest lies at the intersection of evolutionary dynamics, statistical physics and microbial genomics. You can find a list of my publications here.

Most recently, I’m interested in understanding the long-term evolution of human gut bacteria (e.g. on the timescale of early human migrations), as well as developing theoretical tools for predicting the genetic linkage between rare mutations (see our recent preprint, in collaboration with Anastasia Lyulina).

Prior to graduate school, I studied physics, math and computer science at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (because I can’t make up my mind). I was thinking about questions related to phylogenetic trees under the guidance of Nigel Goldenfeld.