Rate My Professor Andy Liang

Dr. Huazheng Liang, known professionally as Andy Liang, serves as an Adjunct Senior Lecturer at the Australian Regenerative Medicine Institute within Monash University's Faculty of Medicine and is affiliated with the Monash Suzhou Research Institute. He obtained his PhD in Anatomy from the University of New South Wales in 2012, with a thesis titled 'Supraspinal projections from the mouse brain to the spinal cord.' Earlier, he earned a Master's degree in Pathology from Fudan University in 2006, focusing on the 'Growth enhancement effect of BzATP on primarily cultured astrocytes,' and a Bachelor of Clinical Medicine from Shandong First Medical University in 2003. Prior to his current roles, Liang was a Lecturer in Pharmacology at Western Sydney University and Principal Investigator at the Translational Research Institute of Brain and Brain-like Intelligence, Shanghai Fourth People's Hospital, School of Medicine, Tongji University.

His research specializations include drug discovery for neurodegenerative diseases, complementary medicine for stroke, neural circuits involved in anti-nociception, learning, memory, and anxiety/depression, and nanoparticle-based drug delivery for neurological diseases and cancers. Liang actively supervises PhD students on projects such as pericytes in Alzheimer's disease pathogenesis, utilizing pericyte-specific Cre-mouse lines and Loxp transgenic mice to investigate molecular mechanisms of pericyte contraction, capillary loss, and cognitive impairment, aiming to identify small molecules for intervention; and neural circuits for learning, memory, and depression/anxiety as part of the Chinese Brain Initiative, employing animal models of Alzheimer's disease with chemogenetic and optogenetic methods. He received the Young Investigator Award in 2016. Key publications encompass 'Tailoring carbon dots for cancer imaging and synergistic therapy' (Dyes and Pigments, 2026), 'Coupling of state space modules and attention mechanisms: An input-aware multi-contrast MRI synthesis method' (Medical Physics, 2025), 'PHLPP1 deficiency alleviates dopaminergic neurodegeneration and represses neuroinflammation in Parkinson’s disease' (Behavioral and Brain Functions, 2025), and editorials including 'Editorial: Neuroinflammation and distribution of proinflammatory markers in the brain' (Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience, 2025) and 'Editorial: Traditional, complementary and integrative medicine – opportunities for managing and treating neurodegenerative diseases and ischaemic stroke' (Frontiers in Pharmacology, 2025). Liang contributes as section editor for Science Progress and guest editor for Frontiers in Pharmacology and Frontiers in Cellular Neuroscience, with over 74 research articles, 14 reviews, and additional outputs.