Tsu-Jae King Liu

Dean and Roy W. Carlson Professor of Engineering, College of Engineering,
and Member, Kavli Energy NonoScience Institute
University of California, Berkeley

Tsu-Jae King Liu became Dean of UC Berkeley’s College of Engineering July 1, 2018. Previously, she served as chair of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences (EECS) and, most recently, as vice provost for academic and space planning.

She was born in Ithaca, New York, and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area. She earned her B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University.

​Liu is known for her innovations in semiconductor devices and technology. As a researcher at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), she worked on polycrystalline-silicon thin-film transistors, technology that is still used today in high-definition flat-panel displays. 

Among the most notable research achievements in Liu’s portfolio is her collaboration with fellow Berkeley engineering professors Chenming Hu and Jeffrey Bokor to develop an advanced fin-shaped field-effect transistor design, dubbed “FinFET,” that can be scaled down in physical dimensions to below 25 nanometers. Today, FinFETs are used in all leading-edge microprocessor chips, which comprise over 10 billion transistors per square centimeter. Liu’s industrial experience comes not only from her time at Xerox PARC, but through a technology start-up she co-founded called Progressant Technologies, which was acquired by Synopsys, Inc., where she served as senior director of engineering in the Advanced Technology Group.