Research

I studied the aesthetics of breast shape under Dr. J. Grant Thomson in the Section of Plastic Surgery at Yale. I determined the relationship between breast volume, surface area, and anthropomorphic measurements that results in the most aesthetically pleasing shape, with the ultimate goal of optimizing patient satisfaction in cosmetic and reconstructive breast surgeries. I am first/second author in the following publications:

• Reply to Catanuto et al., regarding surface area measurement of the female breast.
  Liu YJ, Thomson, JG.
  Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, Accepted.
  
• Surface area measurement of the female breast: phase I. Validation of a novel optical technique.
  Thomson JG, Liu YJ, Restifo RJ, Rinker BD, Reis A.
  Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, 2009 May;123(5):1588-96.
  PubMed Citation
  

And a phase II manuscript has been submitted. In addition, I am working with Dr. Thomson to correlate free flap survival with intra-operative patient temperatures, showing mild intra-operative hypothermia to be beneficial in free flap transfers, and a manuscript has been submitted.

I also studied the molecular history of pseudogenes in Mark Gerstein's lab in the Department of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry at Yale. I am first/co-author in the following publications:

• Comprehensive analysis of the pseudogenes of glycolytic enzymes in vertebrates: the anomalously high number of GAPDH pseudogenes highlights a recent burst of retrotranspositional activity.
  Liu YJ, Zheng D, Balasubramanian S, Carriero N, Khurana E, Robilotto R, Gerstein MB.
  BMC Genomics, 2009 Oct 16;10(1):480.
  PubMed Citation | Publication Link
  
• Comparative analysis of processed ribosomal protein pseudogenes in four mammalian genomes.
  Balasubramanian S, Zheng D, Liu YJ, Fang G, Frankish A, Carriero N, Robilotto R, Cayting P, Gerstein M.
  Genome Biology, 2009 Jan 5;10(1):R2.
  PubMed Citation | Publication Link
  

During college, I worked in Steve Altschuler and Lani Wu's lab for three years when we were located at the Harvard Center for Genomics Research. I developed computational models to simulate gene networks and applied hidden Markov models to tiled genomic microarray data. I am second author in the following publication:

• Genome-scale identification of nucleosome positions in S. cerevisiae.
  Yuan GC, Liu YJ, Dion MF, Slack MD, Wu LF, Altschuler SJ, Rando OJ.
  Science, 2005 Jul 22; 309(5734):626-30.
  PubMed Citation | Publication Link
  

During college, I also worked in Marvin Minsky's lab at the MIT Media Labs on the Open Mind Common Sense Project, building data structures to represent common sense knowledge and enabling a computer to understand concepts that humans often take for granted.

In high school, I explored an unsolved problem in number theory at the Research Science Institute (RSI 1999) and analyzed gastrointestinal creatine absorption by infrared spectroscopy.