Charles Liu, MD, PhD

Professor of Clinical Neurological Surgery, Surgery, Psychiatry and the Behavioral Sciences and Biomedical Engineering

Director, USC Neurorestoration Center

USC Viterbi School of Engineering, Biomedical Engineering

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Overview

Dr. Liu completed his undergraduate education in Chemical Engineering at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and went on to receive his PhD in Chemical/Biomedical Engineering at Rice University. He then attended the Yale University School of Medicine, receiving his MD degree. He trained in neurosurgery at the University of Southern California Affiliated Hospitals.

He is presently professor of neurosurgery and neurology and holds the Apuzzo Professorship for Advanced Neurosurgery. He is also Director of the USC Center for Neurorestoration, which functions to bring scientific advances in the laboratory and engineers new tools to restore function to the injured and diseased nervous system. He also serves as the Surgical Director of the USC Comprehensive Epilepsy Program, one of the premier and highest volume surgical epilepsy programs in the world.

He has received numerous research awards and made a large number of visitorships/invited lectures throughout the world. He also serves as Associate Editor of the journal, WORLD NEUROSURGERY. He is a principal neurosurgical consultant for the NCAA USC Trojans Athletics Department. In addition, he serves on the Executive Committee of the Congress of Neurological Surgeons. At Rancho los Amigos, Dr. Liu is Chair of the Department of Neurosurgery and is developing cutting-edge programs in restorative neurosurgery, collaborating with scientists at Caltech and USC, among others.

Awards

  • Castle Connolly Medical Ltd.: Top Doctor, 2015
  • Castle Connolly Medical Ltd: Top Doctor, 2011

Publications

  • Chronic subthreshold rTMS transiently disrupts learning but enhances memory and flexibility in healthy rats. J Neural Eng. 2026 Sep 25; 23(5).. View in PubMed
  • Functional ultrasound imaging through a human cranial window for mesoscopic mapping of motor effector encoding within the sensorimotor cortex. bioRxiv. 2026 Jul 09.. View in PubMed
  • Duration-modulated neural population dynamics in humans during BMI controls. Commun Biol. 2026 Jun 26.. View in PubMed
  • Neuromodulatory strategies overcome multiple inevitable impairments of cerebral palsy. J Neurophysiol. 2026 Aug 01; 136(2):445-458.. View in PubMed
  • Spooky action at a distance: neuromodulation, physiologic distress signals, and limb preservation. Burns Trauma. 2026; 14:tkag017.. View in PubMed
  • Real-time brain-computer interface control of walking exoskeleton with bilateral sensory feedback. Brain Stimul. 2026 May-Jun; 19(3):103065.. View in PubMed
  • Rotational ultrasound and photoacoustic tomography of the human body. Nat Biomed Eng. 2026 Jan 16.. View in PubMed
  • Intraspinal Microstimulation of Dorsolateral Funiculus for Coordinated Bladder Control. IEEE Trans Neural Syst Rehabil Eng. 2026; 34:1650-1657.. View in PubMed
  • Charge density of multi-channel intra-cortical micro-stimulation modulates intensity and naturalness of evoked somatosensations. J Neural Eng. 2025 12 12; 22(6).. View in PubMed
  • Hierarchical and Context-Dependent Encoding of Actions in Human Posterior Parietal and Motor Cortex. bioRxiv. 2025 Nov 13.. View in PubMed