Chunlei Liu
University of California-Berkeley, CA·Biomedical Engineering
How can we see, and gently steer, what happens inside the living brain without surgery? Diseases such as Alzheimer's disease, the most common cause of dementia in older adults, begin with small changes in particular cells and brain regions long before symptoms appear.
- Fields
Biomedical Engineering
Neuroscience
Engineering
- Topics
Alzheimer's disease
tau
amyloid-beta
- Grants
- 5 known grants, through May 2029
What they work on
- Develop FeRIC, a tool that uses radio waves and ferritin-linked ion channels, to control whole-cell and local calcium signaling in astrocytes, the brain's star-shaped support cells, in living animals.
- Use FeRIC to control astrocyte–neuron communication at tripartite synapses in vivo, and work out the biophysical mechanism by which radiofrequency waves act on ferritin-coupled channels.
- Combine FeRIC with enhancer AAV vectors, viruses that switch genes on only in chosen cell types, to control Alzheimer's-vulnerable neurons and astrocytes in rodent models.
- Test cell-type-specific hypotheses about how tau protein builds up, spreads and is cleared, in rodent cells and animals, and in exploratory studies of human and non-human primate brain tissue.
- Develop an MRI technique that separates iron-driven (paramagnetic) from amyloid- and tau-driven (diamagnetic) magnetic susceptibility, and test these signals as markers of Alzheimer's progression.
- Validate the susceptibility markers by scanning brains at autopsy and matching each 3D MRI voxel to stained tissue sections examined under the microscope.
- Build a plug-and-play ADAPT coil, a digitally switched MRI transmit coil, for 7-tesla MRI that excites any nucleus without an RF amplifier, and test it with partner sites on aging and neurological disease.
- Build a combined TMS-EEG-fMRI system with a quiet, robot-steered TMS coil, a flexible head-conforming coil array and wireless EEG, and demonstrate brain-state-triggered stimulation of a deep brain target.
More about the research
Studying and treating them calls for better ways to image brain chemistry and to switch specific cells on or off from outside the head. The projects here span both sides: magnetic-field tools that control chosen brain cells wirelessly, and new magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) hardware and methods for imaging the brain in finer detail.
Why it matters
This work could help people with Alzheimer's disease and other dementias, brain cancer and other neurological disorders. MRI markers that tell iron apart from protein clumps may allow earlier, cheaper detection of Alzheimer's changes and tracking of disease progression in ordinary clinical imaging centers. Cell-specific magnetic control of neurons and astrocytes may point to ways of slowing tau spread. Digital 7T coils and the combined TMS-EEG-fMRI system could give researchers and clinicians better tools for imaging and noninvasive brain treatment.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Make MRI Coils Digital and Programmable to Advance Ultra-High-Field Brain MRI
NIH · Jul 2025 – May 2029
Genetically-Encoded, Non-Invasive and Wireless Modulation of Calcium Dynamics in Astrocytes With Spatiotemporal Precision and Depth
NIH · Feb 2023 – Jan 2028
Magnetogenetic control of vulnerable brain cell types in Alzheimer's disease
NIH · Aug 2025 – Jul 2027
Closest labs
Tamer Ibrahim
University of Pittsburgh, PA·Biomedical Engineering
Measure small vessel shape, cerebrovascular reactivity (how brain vessels respond to demand) and cerebrospinal fluid flow with 7T MRI in 60 older adults without dementia, comparing amyloid-positive and amyloid-negative people.
Alexandria Zakrzewski
Kansas State University, KS·Psychology
Establish a transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) and repetitive TMS suite combined with EEG, enabling virtual-lesion and neuromodulation experiments that causally test cognitive and neural plasticity.
Brian Gold
University of Kentucky, KY·Neuroscience
Test whether low blood-brain barrier water exchange, measured with the new DW-ASL MRI sequence, predicts growth of white matter hyperintensities over about 3 years in healthy older adults.
The school
University of California-Berkeley: 46 labs on PI Pages, $1.1B a year on research, 825 research doctorates a year.
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