[2] Liu realised that working as a doctor in New Zealand would be difficult due to the language barrier, so made the decision to retrain as a researcher.
[2] She joined the staff of the University of Otago in 1994,[3] and began a PhD in the Department of Psychology, supervised by David Bilkey, the following year.
[2] She completed her doctoral thesis, titled Perirhinal cortex contributions to spatial memory in 1998,[1] and rose to full professor in 2020.
[5] Liu's research focuses on neurodegenerative disorders such as schizophrenia and Alzheimer's disease, and on the changes in memory, learning and brain metabolism during normal ageing.
[6] Liu's research group uses animal models and post-mortem human brain tissue to investigate how these changed processes lead to disease, and to try to identify possible diagnostic tests and therapeutic targets.