David R. Liu

David Ruchien Liu (Chinese: 劉如謙; pinyin: Liú Rúqiān; born 1973) is an American molecular biologist, biochemist, and organic chemist who is the Thomas Dudley Cabot Professor of the Natural Sciences at Harvard University and the Richard Merkin Professor at the Broad Institute. He is known as the pioneer of multiple genetic engineering techniques, including base editing, prime editing, and DNA-templated organic synthesis.

Born to a Taiwanese American family, Liu graduated first in his class from Harvard College, where he studied chemistry and biology under Nobel Prize laureate Elias James Corey. After earning his doctorate from the University of California, Berkeley, Liu became a professor at Harvard at age 26. He served as the university's John L. Loeb Professor of the Natural Sciences from 2003 to 2004 and as a Harvard College Professor from 2007 to 2010.

Liu is a principal investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the director of the Merkin Institute of Transformative Technologies in Healthcare at the Broad Institute. He has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Medicine, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In 2025, he was awarded a Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences for the development of base editing and prime editing, both fundamental gene-editing techniques.