Dr Nora Liu
Grant-Funded Postdoctoral Research Fellow
School of Pharmacy and Biomedical Sciences
College of Health
Eligible to supervise Masters and PhD (as Co-Supervisor) - email supervisor to discuss availability.
Dr Nora (Wenjun) Liu obtained a double undergraduate degree in teaching and science, majoring in Genetics and minoring in Statistics, from the University of Adelaide in 2019. Her passion for unravelling the complexities of biological data using statistical knowledge led her to pursue a Master of Philosophy at the University of Adelaide in 2020. After 1.5 years in the MPhil program, she demonstrated satisfying research progress that allowed her to upgrade to a PhD, where she further developed her skills as a bioinformatician. During her PhD journey at the Dame Roma Mitchell Cancer Research Laboratories, Nora focused on developing novel analytical pipelines to decipher complex transcriptomic data, addressing significant biological questions across diverse medical research areas, such as neurodegeneration, breast and ovarian cancer. Notably, Nora's contributions extended to the development of an R/Bioconductor package sSNAPPY for novel single-sample pathway perturbation analysis that is now publically available.In addition to her research project, Nora has extensive teaching experience. She tutored multiple undergraduate courses covering algebra, calculus, statistics in R, and data science using Python, as well as introductory bioinformatics during her PhD. After she finished her PhD in 2023, Nora joined the Adelaide Centre of Epigenetics as a post-doctoral researcher in Professor Jose Polo’s group. In this role, she will be applying bioinformatics approaches to unravel the intricacies of cancer epigenetics.
| Date | Position | Institution name |
|---|---|---|
| 2023 - ongoing | Postdoctoral Researcher | University of Adelaide |
| Language | Competency |
|---|---|
| Chinese (Mandarin) | Can read, write, speak, understand spoken and peer review |
| English | Can read, write, speak, understand spoken and peer review |
| Date | Institution name | Country | Title |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 - 2023 | University of Adelaide | Australia | Doctor of Philosophy |
| 2016 - 2019 | University of Adelaide | Australia | Bachelor of Teaching with Bachelor of Science |
| Year | Citation |
|---|---|
| 2025 | Kan, W. L., Weekley, C. M., Nero, T. L., Hercus, T. R., Yip, K. H., Tumes, D. J., . . . Parker, M. W. (2025). The β Common Cytokine Receptor Family Reveals New Functional Paradigms From Structural Complexities. Immunological Reviews, 329(1), e13430-1-e13430-25. Scopus1 WoS3 Europe PMC1 |
| 2024 | Liu, W., Mäkinen, V. -P., Tilley, W. D., & Pederson, S. M. (2024). sSNAPPY: an R/Bioconductor package for single-sample directional pathway perturbation analysis. F1000Research, 13, 628-653. |
| 2022 | Casey, A., Liu, W., Hein, L., Sargeant, T., Pederson, S., & Mäkinen, V. -P. (2022). Transcriptional targets of senataxin and E2 promoter binding factors are associated with neuro-degenerative pathways during increased autophagic flux. |
| Date | Role | Research Topic | Program | Degree Type | Student Load | Student Name |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024 | Co-Supervisor | How pluripotent transcription factors reshape the prostate cancer epigenetic landscape to reprogram the cell fate toward neuroendocrine-like with their cofactors | Doctor of Philosophy | Doctorate | Full Time | Mr Tianjun Zhang |
| 2024 | Co-Supervisor | How pluripotent transcription factors reshape the prostate cancer epigenetic landscape to reprogram the cell fate toward neuroendocrine-like with their cofactors | Doctor of Philosophy | Doctorate | Full Time | Mr Tianjun Zhang |
| Date | Role | Research Topic | Location | Program | Supervision Type | Student Load | Student Name |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024 - ongoing | Co-Supervisor | How pluripotent transcription factors contribute the neuroendocrine-like reprogramming in prostate cancer | South Australian Immunogenomics Cancer Institute | - | Doctorate | Full Time | Tianjun (Percy) Zhang |