Building World-Class Biomedical Research Institutions with Dr. Edison Liu (Part 1)

About this episode

Dr. Edison Liu discusses his journey in biomedical research and leadership in cancer genomics.

Dr. Edison Liu is a medical doctor turned cancer geneticist, whose work focuses on cancer genomics, breast cancer biology, and translational medicine. He has held senior leadership roles in biomedical research institutions in the United States and Asia, as the founding executive director of the Genome Institute of Singapore (GIS), and later the president and CEO of the Jackson Laboratory, one of the world's leading genetics research institutions. Along the way, he helped shape Singapore's biomedical landscape, led genomics research through crises like SARS, and expanded global position medicine efforts across Asia and North America. In this episode, Dr. Edison Liu shares his journey from being motivated from childhood by medicine, then pivoting into basic science late in training after frustration with empiric cancer care and inspiration from oncogene discoveries, leading to work at UCSF with Nobel laureate J. Michael Bishop. He explains how clinical experience shaped his research questions, how he balanced lab discovery with focused clinical work and molecular trials, and how leading a 1,200-person NCI division taught institutional-scale leadership. Recruited to Singapore by…

People in this episode

Host: John Joson N

Guest: Dr. Edison Liu

Topics covered

• biomedical research
• cancer genomics
• leadership in science
• translational medicine
• Singapore's biomedical landscape

Keywords

• biomedical research
• cancer genetics
• genomics
• leadership
• Singapore
• translational medicine
• oncogene discoveries

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Genome Institute of Singapore, Jackson Laboratory, UCSF

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