Episode 2: Dr. Shixin Liu

In this episode, we meet Dr. Shixin Liu, a head of lab at Rockefeller whose research examines how the molecular machines that coordinate gene expression and DNA replication do their jobs so well. Beyond the lab, we learn about the origins of Dr. Liu’s love of science, his restaurant recommendations for great Chinese food, and why you shouldn’t be afraid to meet your science heroes.

Beyond the Lab is produced by RockEDU Science Outreach and was recorded during the 2024 Summer Science Research Program (SSRP). To learn more, visit rockefeller.edu/outreach.

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Note: This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.

Shixin: Okay. 

Leora: Okay. 

Shixin: Sounds good. 

Leora: Okay. 

Shixin: Sounds great. 

Never have any doubt to say “I am good enough for this.” You are definitely good enough. If you have the passion and if you have the determination, you can always make it. The worst case is that you tried it, don’t like it, you try something else. 

Jacob: Hello everyone. I’m Jacob.

Leora: And I’m Leora. 

Jacob: And this is 

In unison: Beyond the Lab!

Jacob: Unfortunately, Hana could not be with us today. But we do have a very exciting guest that we’d like to introduce. 

Leora: So welcome to Beyond the Lab, the podcast where we discuss all things not science with the world’s leading scientists. Today we’re honored to host Dr. Shixin Liu, head of the Liu  Lab at The Rockefeller University.

Dr. Liu’s research program focuses on understanding the operating mechanisms of molecular machines that interact with DNA and nucleosomes. His contributions to the field have been recognized with prestigious awards, including the NIH Director’s New Innovator Award and the Kimmel Scholars Award. Thank you for joining us, Dr. Liu. 

Shixin: Thank you for having me. 

Leora: Okay, now we’re gonna begin with an icebreaker. So, Dr. Liu, can you tell me the best piece of advice you’ve ever received? 

Shixin: The best piece of advice I received, the thing that just occurred to me, is the piece of advice I received from my postdoctoral advisor. His name’s Carlos Bustamante. He’s a famous scientist from Peru. He told me as a scientist, don’t be afraid to feel incompetent, because as a scientist, the best place to be is to be at the interface between competence and incompetence so that you are always poised to make new discoveries that nobody has made before. If you are always in your comfort zone, it’s not necessarily the place you want to be. So if you feel like, “there’s so much I don’t know, and there’s so much to be discovered,” that’s where you should be, and that’s where [you] should be excited about. 

Leora: What about you, Jacob? 

Jacob: Well, my favorite piece of advice I think I’ve ever received is not to pretend that you know something just for the sake of seeming like you know it. I think a lot of us, and especially I know I’m speaking for myself, I definitely fall into the trap sometimes of pretending like I understand something that I don’t, or knowing something that I don’t, just to seem smarter or seem like I can get around in an area where I’m actually not super comfortable. But I think it’s so important to admit that you don’t know things, and it can actually be more impressive than pretending to know complicated things. 

Shixin: Yeah, that’s so true. 

Jacob: Thank you.

Leora: I think my favorite piece of advice I’ve ever received was to acknowledge that every single person is living life for the first time. And I feel like we tend to look at people very critically, and when they make mistakes, we get upset or we’ll criticize other people. But I think we tend to always look at ourselves and realize that we’re living life for the first time, but it’s like everyone’s living life for the first time.

Shixin: Yeah. I mean, especially nowadays, things are happening so fast, [at] such a fast pace. We all experience new things at the same time, right? So we all experience the same kind of new things, and then we should share our own experiences [and] discuss it. 

Jacob: So can you tell us a little bit about your childhood, because you didn’t grow up in America?

Shixin: Yeah, I grew up in China and I stayed in China until I was 19. That’s when I came to [the] U.S. for grad school. So my early childhood is very much like a normal Chinese kid. You know, we study a lot. Our parents have very high expectations for us academically. So I spent a lot of time in school and doing homework, but I did enjoy things outside the classroom. From [an] early age, I enjoyed nature. I enjoyed going to the field to see animals and plants and see how they change with seasons. It happened to be that my parents are both biology teachers, middle school biology teachers. I don’t know if that’s [the] reason, but they certainly instilled this interest in nature and life and biology in me at an early age. I think that’s one of the reasons I decided to study biology now. 

Jacob: And do you think that when you were in the field, you thought, “I want to be a biologist”? Or did you just think, “I am exploring right now, I’m enjoying this, discovering these things”?

Shixin: Right. You know, I wouldn’t say I [was] determined to study biology when I was a 10-year-old kid. I was [just] in general interested in what’s happening in the world, in the natural world. But I studied math, physics, chemistry, other things in college. And then only when I was I think [in my] junior year did I finally decide okay, biology is the major I decide to spend more time on in grad school.

So actually at that time, biology in China was not probably the most popular subject to pursue as a PhD. Most of my classmates went to physics or computational science because maybe at that time they [would] have better job prospects. But when I was deciding my major, I thought “this is what I want to do, I wanna study the secrets of life.” There’s so much to be learned about how molecules in the cell interact, how they function. And that’s where I decided that biology [was] the career to pursue. 

Jacob: And as a kid in elementary school, what were your hours like for school? Because I know in China it’s a little bit different than in the us.

Shixin: Yeah, you would be scared if I told you how much, how many hours. We got up very early, six o’clock, and then we [went] to school at seven, before seven [we] have to arrive to the classroom. And it’s class, after class, after class until five or six in the afternoon. 

Leora: Oh my goodness. 

Shixin: And then we come home, have dinner, and then we do homework until 10, 11 o’clock. 

Leora: This is in elementary school? 

Shixin: Yeah. 

Jacob: Wow. Wow. 

Leora: That’s really crazy. 

Jacob: With all that school time, did you have any… 

Shixin: It’s not five days a week. It’s six or six and a half days a week. 

Jacob: Wow. Wow. I mean, that’s a lot of school. Did you have any time to, to do any– Did you have any hobbies as a kid other than school?

Shixin: Yeah. You squeeze some fun time between classes. You go outside, play with your friends. There’s a lunch break and then when you go home, dinner time, and then before homework, you have some free time. You do have some summer vacation and winter vacation.

Jacob: And how did you use that free time? Did you, you know, do anything particular that… 

Shixin: Most of the time just hang[ing] out with my friends in the backyard. You know, in general, I spent most of my summer and the winter vacations either at home or with my grandparents in the countryside. But that’s where I spent most of [my] time with nature. I think [that’s] maybe, in hindsight, why I got into biology. Because in the countryside, you have so many things you don’t get to see when you’re in the city during the school years. 

Jacob: Yeah. And once you got into high school, were there any subjects other than biology or I guess science in general that fascinated you?

Shixin: Yeah. In high school physics, I did very bad at physics in the beginning. ‘Cause suddenly from middle school to high school, the difficulty in physics jump[ed] several scales. So I almost failed my first physics test in my first high school year. But then I got better and I really got interested in the elegance of physics and basic physical laws.

Actually, physics [is] still one of the important elements in my current lab because we study biology using physical tools. So we are actually researching an interface between physics and biology. So the subfield I’m [in] is called biophysics. Nowadays, at Rockefeller as well, many labs are using multidisciplinary tools to study biology, chemistry, physics, math, AI, all these new tools or different kinds of ways to study life.

Yeah, it’s very exciting. And I encourage high school students– Even if you decide to study biology in the future, it’s very important to also learn other disciplines and subjects because you never know. Maybe in the future, other kinds of things, even language or communication, [and] different skills can help you with your main research focus. 

Jacob: I think a lot of the listeners might not realize that science is so interdisciplinary, like you just talked about. 

Leora: Yeah. Also, it’s so interesting that you said you almost failed your first physics test, and I feel like people think that, “oh, I’m not good at this subject,” or like, “I failed this test, so I can’t go into this when I’m older.” But that’s not true. And also school isn’t– School is obviously important, but it’s not completely reflective of how it’s gonna be when you’re doing it in real life, in real time. 

Shixin: Exactly. It’s definitely true that the best researchers, the best scientists I’ve ever seen,  they’re not necessarily the best [performers] in grades, you know? Many people, brilliant scientists, know they’re not necessarily doing number one or the top 1% in grades. As long as you’re interested, you’re excited about things you do, you have enough passion and determination, you can always get there. 

Leora: Okay. So now we’re gonna move on to our next segment, Hana’s favorite segment, but she’s not here, but it’s your favorite things. So I’m gonna start off with what’s your favorite book that you’ve ever read? 

Shixin: Ooh, I have to go back to my early childhood. That’s [when] I read more. Now, I still read, but I know I spent a lot of time reading research papers. Most of my favorite books are Chinese. You know, there’s four famous Chinese novels, the Three Kingdoms or Journey to the West. [Have you] heard of Monkey King? 

Jacob: Well, I’ve heard of Monkey King because there’s actually a graphic novel.

Shixin:  Exactly. So he original novel is called the Journey to the West. It’s about the monkey, the pig, the monk. Four of them go from China to India to search for Buddhism, literature, and then they bring it back to China. So there’s a lot of interesting stories of how this group of people overcome difficulties on the journey in search for the truth, [the] search for their, for their goal, the dream. 

Jacob: Kind of like science a little bit. Do you have a favorite color? 

Shixin: I think green. 

Leora: It’s very science. 

Jacob: Yeah. Very sciency. 

Shixin: It’s a color of life, right? And one of the most [useful] lasers in the lab to excite molecules. You can label molecules and see their dynamics. And one of the most commonly used lasers in our lab is a green color.

Leora: And what’s your favorite dessert? 

Shixin: A good cake is always not bad. Our lab [does] a lot of cake for birthdays and events. And my students, they sometimes order the cake from a place called Lady M .

Jacob: Oh, I love Lady M! Did you get the one with the thousand layers? 

Shixin: Yeah, the famous one, Thousand Layer Cake, but different toppings, right? Some matcha. Mm-hmm. Strawberries, chocolate. The most recent one I had is, I think a strawberry flavor. It was fabulous. 

Leora: So you can follow that up with what’s your favorite cuisine and your favorite restaurant?

Shixin: I think you know Chinese food is the best by far. But in general, Asian food. I enjoy Asian food. Japanese food, Korean food, and South East Asian food. European food I also like. I also like Indian food. There’s no food I don’t like, but if you have to pick one still, it’s my– My Chinese stomach.

Jacob: And do you have any like, very authentic Chinese restaurant recommendations in the city? 

Shixin: They just opened a new Chinese restaurant called Din Tai Fung. It’s like soup dumplings. 

Leora: Oh yeah! 

Shixin: It’s impossible to book a table, but I,

Leora: It’s very viral. 

Shixin: I encourage you to book early. It’s an experience. I won’t say it’s necessarily the most authentic, but you know, the food is there. The decor and then the things you can taste there. It’s different from every good Chinese [food] you get. 

Leora: Did you get the cucumber salad? IThat’s very famous. 

Shixin: No. 

Leora: And the chocolate, the chocolate desserts. Yeah. 

Shixin: Funny, neither of them. I heard of them. 

Leora: Oh well next time you go you should try!

Shixin: I did try the soup dumpling. It was great. And the sesame noodle is also good. But if you do wanna get really authentic and affordable Chinese food, I definitely encourage you to go to Flushing. 

Jacob: I’ve been to a dumpling place in Flushing called Dumpling Galaxy. Have you ever been there?

Shixin: I haven’t been, but I’ve heard of good things about it. 

Jacob: It’s very great. It’s great. 

Shixin: Yeah. 

Jacob: And it was actually, it was hard for me to order because all of the servers only spoke Mandarin, which I guess was maybe a good sign.

Shixin: I’ll order for you. 

Jacob: Yeah! That sounds like a great idea. 

Shixin: But, you know, New York is great in terms of different kinds of cuisines and cultures.

Jacob: Yeah. New York City’s food is great. Is it as good as China’s? 

Shixin: New York has a lot of good Chinese food. So some of them [are] even more authentic than you can get in China, because there’s so many Chinese people, different generations of immigrants here in New York City. The Chinese food quality here is very high.

Jacob: Do you have a favorite TV show or a movie? 

Shixin: I like to watch [what] they call “prestige TV”, like the TV that’s high quality, almost like a movie. I like Breaking Bad. I enjoy Succession. Sopranos. I believe you heard of this TV. 

Leora: Yeah.

Jacob: Of course!

Leora: I know you said you had traveled when you were younger, but if you travel now, your favorite place to travel or favorite place you’ve been?

Shixin: That’s another hobby I like outside [of] science is to travel. I love [traveling] to new places, new countries to experience their, their food, their culture, and their people. Our family is planning on a trip to Spain in the winter. We’ve never been. I’m very excited. We went to Germany and [the] Czech Republic last winter.

Jacob: Oh, wow. 

Shixin: I went to Peru for [a] conference a few years ago. That was a really, really great experience. So South America is another place. Japan is great. I just came back from a conference in Japan. Our family went to Japan also last year. But the problem with Japan [is] now [it’s] so popular. Everybody’s in Japan, so everything is so crowded everywhere. But there’s so many places I wanna go to. I wanna go to Africa, I wanna go to Australia–those places I’ve never been. Because I’m just curious about what’s going on there and how people live their life. 

Jacob: I guess you’re able to do a lot of traveling when you do science.

Shixin: That’s one bonus about being a scientist: you get to go to different places for conferences, for seminars. [They] do work there, but they also get [to] experience different places, which is great. 

Leora: So I guess that’s a good segue into current life and your hobbies. You said travel is one of your hobbies, but some other hobbies you have?

Shixin: I like watching sports. [The] Olympics [are] going on right now. 

Leora: Oh yeah!

Shixin: When I came to my office, I was just watching [the] Olympics.

Jacob: Oh, I’m sorry we took you away from that. 

Shixin: It’s okay. It’s almost the end of the day now. 

Jacob: What sport? 

Shixin: I mean, [for the] Olympics, all sports, [but[ especially the sports I don’t get to watch normally regularly. I’m a big soccer fan. I just watched the Euro Cup and also Copa America. When I was a student I watched a lot of baseball and basketball, NBA and MLB. But now it’s just– They have so many games. I don’t really have time to follow every day. But I do like sports, to take my mind off science and just watch and relax.

I have two young daughters and then have a cat. You know, kids are great because they always put you in the right place, you know? Even though you’re a PI, you’re a group leader at, at work, at home you’re just a goofy dad. My daughter [makes] fun of me all the time, [saying], “you don’t know about this, your English is not authentic, your cooking tastes bad.” 

Jacob: Now that you’re a dad, do you have a favorite dad joke? 

Shixin: It’s too embarrassing to mention. 

Jacob: Oh, okay. Okay. 

Shixin: But my girls are in China right now with their grandparents. 

Leora: So nice.

Shixin: It’s the first time after COVID. They spend a lengthy time in China, 

Jacob: Wow!

Shixin: Which is great ’cause they almost forgot all of [their] Chinese, speaking Chinese. So hopefully when they come back they can finally communicate with us in Chinese again. I do think it’s, it’s, it’s useful to learn [a] language, both for your brain [but] also for practical reasons, to know more languages. I wish I [knew] more than just English and Chinese, but I guess it’s never too late to learn. How many languages [do] you know? Do you guys know? 

Leora: Two that I can really speak. 

Jacob: Yeah. Well, so we go to a Jewish school actually. So we speak English and Hebrew, or I guess I’d like to say that I speak Hebrew because I’ve been taking it for like over a decade, but it really has not synced up with my brain yet. So I can kind of speak it. I can understand it basically fluently, but I think Leora is a little bit better than I am. 

Shixin: Okay. That’s great. 

Leora: Yeah. And then I took Spanish for about a quarter of a year, freshman year, and then I decided to take engineering instead. So, 

Shixin: Engineering? 

Leora: Yeah.

Shixin: Well there’s some language there.

Leora: Yeah. Coding language.

Jacob: Yeah. Programming languages. I guess we didn’t, we didn’t count that, but yeah. I also can speak Spanish a little bit. I’ve taken it for now four years or, or three and a half, so. So I’m getting there with both of the languages.

Shixin: Language is so fascinating.

Jacob: Yeah, it really is. 

Leora: After a week where you worked hard, what’s your favorite way to unwind and de-stress? 

Shixin: Just hang[ing] out with my kids and my family. We got a cat just a year ago. The girls have been asking for a cat for, I don’t know, seven years, and finally me and my wife gave in and said, “okay, let’s get a cat.” So we got one; her name’s Connie. We got her when she was just a couple months old. Now she’s a year old. It’s definitely the attention center of the family. So yeah, take care of her, spend time with my girls… We do have a small house in Long Island, so we’ll go there on weekends sometimes just to unwind. Being closer to nature, to the ocean. 

Jacob: What does your wife do? 

Shixin: She’s also in academia. She studied literature, actually Chinese literature. She teaches Chinese language and literature in Hunter College.

Jacob: I think what we’ve kind of picked up on is that academics tend to be married to other academics. 

Shixin: Yes, not always, but yeah. 

Leora: Yes. So our podcast is, you know, geared towards younger students–high school, college people who are thinking about science but aren’t a hundred percent sure that that’s the area they wanna go into. And one way we’re hoping is to just show that the people in this field are people and they have hobbies and interests and whatever. So what advice would you give to these people? 

Shixin: You know, don’t be afraid to walk up to so-called famous people and just introduce yourself and then ask questions about their science, about their lives. I would say [there’s] many more famous people here at Rockefeller than me, but I can tell you, everyone of the faculty members enjoy talking to young people, high school students, even middle school students, small kids. Because these are the next generation in the future.  So if we can convince one or few of you to come, that’s our goal. We’re excited about it. So I’m happy to do this with you guys and I’m happy that you’re talking to some of the other scientists at Rockefeller. 

And never have any doubt to say “I am good enough for this.” You are definitely good enough. If you have the passion and if you have the determination, you can always make it. The worst case is that you tried it, don’t like it, you try something else. 

Leora: Is there anything we haven’t asked you that you wanna say? 

Shixin: Um, no. You guys are very professional.

Leora: Thank you! 

Jacob: Thank you so much! 

Shixin: Maybe that can be your second career. So what gave you this idea to have [a] podcast?

Jacob: So we’re doing this elective, the science communication elective. And we have a kind of a final project to create a piece of science communication, and we thought it would be a cool idea to have a podcast for people to listen to who aren’t necessarily set on science as a career or even as a subject, as a thing, and for them to kind of meet the people behind it and see that there are humans behind science. 

Leora: Because I guess I was thinking about it, and if people would ask me one thing that I’ve really learned from this program, it would be obviously the stuff that I’ve researched, but also just that all these people are so nice and so friendly. And you know, ’cause I’ve never worked in a lab before, this is my first summer. And that’s just one thing that I really learned is that people are really interesting and fun to talk to. And I wanted to show that to everyone because I feel like people don’t always realize that. 

Shixin: Every scientist is a human being. 

Leora: Yeah. 

Shixin: First and foremost.

Jacob: Yeah. Well, thank you so much for joining us today. I think we learned a lot about your life as a kid and also you talked a little bit about how science is, is very interdisciplinary, which I think is something that’s so great to stress and something that people forget maybe if they view science as this scary, foreign thing.

Leora: Yeah. Thank you so much for coming! 

Jacob: Alright, thank you and see you next time on… 

In unison: Beyond The Lab! 

Jacob: And feel better Hana! 

Emily: Thanks to our interviewee, Dr. Shixin Liu, and thank you for listening. If you like what you heard, please share our podcast with family, friends, and anyone you know who loves science and stories of the people behind it.

Beyond The Lab is a production of RockEDU Science Outreach at The Rockefeller University in New York City. It was produced and hosted by Hana, Leora, and Jacob during their participation in the Summer Science Research Program. It was also produced by Emily Costa and Laura Pellicer, with assistance from Lizzie Krisch.

Our cover art was designed by Jeanne Garbarino, and our theme music is by Blue Dot Sessions. To learn more about Beyond The Lab or RockEDU, please visit www.rockefeller.edu/outreach. And thanks for listening! 

Shixin: The final piece will be, how long? 10 minutes. 20 minutes? 

Jacob: Probably around like 20… 

Leora: 30 minutes.

Jacob: 25…

Leora: I mean, it just depends how long you want to talk for.

Jacob: Yeah. 

Shixin: I guess if you, yeah, sure. Yeah. 

Jacob: Whenever you’re… 

Shixin: As long as you want.

Leora: Okay! 

Jacob: Perfect!