Li-Qing Chen

Li-Qing Chen is an assistant professor at the University of Illinois. Li-Qing is an expert on sugar transport in plants and best known for discovering the existence of SWEET genes in plants, which play an essential role in partitioning sugars between compartments within cells and transporting sugars between tissues throughout the plant. For ROGUE, she is researching redirecting sugar flux towards biofuel production. She earned her bachelor's and master's degrees from Nanjing Forestry University in China. Li-Qing then went on to earn her doctorate from China Agricultural University. After graduation, she moved to the U.S for her postdoctoral training at the Carnegie Institution for Science at Stanford University. Her work has been published in many high-impact journals, including Nature, Science, and The Plant Cell. She is the winner of the 2013 New Phytologist Tansley Medal for Excellence in Plant Science. She is also a recipient of the American Society of Plant Biologists Sharon Gray Women's Young Investigator Travel Award.