Yangyang Liu, PhD, is an Associate Professor of Chemistry at Cal State LA. Her research lab at Cal State LA studies porous nanomaterials for environmental and biomedical applications. Dr. Liu and her team are passionate about developing more effective and safe therapeutics by improving their delivery systems. Her team designs highly porous and responsive nanocarriers that can efficiently and selectively deliver the drug/gene to the desired target cells. This will minimize the impact on healthy cells and lower the risks of medication side effects. These nanomaterials can also protect the drug/gene from degradation and increase the lifetime of therapeutics.