Julia places a focus on individual mentoring with her trainees and strives to create an environment where people of all backgrounds, orientations, and experiences can thrive. Julia has mentored a number of students and received extensive communication and leadership training, including workshops focused on understanding different personality and learning styles. She prioritizes her lab members’ scientific and personal well-being and supports them in exploring their intellectual curiosity and achieving their career goals.

The Liu Lab is part of the Department of Integrative Biology and Physiology, which places an emphasis on interdisciplinary research and collaboration to answer complex questions. Our lab is committed to providing a welcoming environment for people of all backgrounds, orientations, and experiences. Julia's goal is to foster an inclusive, collaborative, challenging, and fun community that can help everyone succeed and reach their full potential. Julia encourages trainees to write papers and fellowship applications and to present their work at local, regional, and national meetings, and works with trainees to improve presentation and written skills.

The Liu Lab is located in the Cancer and Cardiovascular Research Building at the University of Minnesota, and is part of the Biomedical Discovery District. Over 1000 researchers work in this building, with access to extensive core services, including phenotyping, genomics, animal, and imaging facilities. There is a focus on collaboration and interdisciplinary research, which creates an ideal environment for scientific discovery and growth. In addition to these facilities, the Liu Lab has ample bench space, adjacent to a cell culture suite with a hood and incubators. The lab also oversees a Seahorse XFe96 and BioTek Cytation imager shared by the department and has easy access to the rest of the department's state-of-the-art shared equipment.