Xiaoxi Liu is fascinated with building all kinds of shape-defined structures with aesthetic or practical utilities. In the research lab, his interests reside on synthesis of biologically active small molecule probes to study deubiquitinating enzymes and other human disease relevant targets.  He joined the Buhrlage lab at DFCI in January of 2016 as a research fellow and was promoted to scientist I in August of 2019.  Relying on his experience in synthetic organic chemistry and pharmaceutical science, Xiaoxi has developed a few highly potent small molecule probes to investigate molecular targets driving tumorigenesis (USP7, STK4, et al.).  Prior to joining the group, Xiaoxi was a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Vermont (UVM) for 1 year where his research centered on chirality-assisted synthesis of enantiomerically pure macromolecules.  Xiaoxi obtained his doctoral degree in organic chemistry from UVM as well.  His graduate research focused on total synthesis of medicinally relevant natural products, as well as development of novel methodologies for heterocycle synthesis.  He has presented his work at a number of invited lectures and national conferences and has authored high-impact peer-reviewed articles.  In his spare time, he enjoys cooking, hiking and playing soccer.