Tracy Liu

Ph.D., Winterhur/University of Delaware Program in Art Conservation, 2017

I was born in Nanjing, China where generations of my family on both sides are from, and very proud to be from there.  One of the most impactful events in my early life was being a competitive singles figure skater for 7 years.  It’s a sport that has never left me even after all these years – I skated for the Cal team as an undergrad and have skated on the Princeton team all four years of graduate school so far.  As alluded to, I went to undergrad at UC Berkeley where I worked in the labs of Dean Toste and Paul Alivisatos.  Ultimately, Organic chemistry was my favorite field amongst the chemistries, which brought me to Dave’s lab here at Princeton.  I’m interested in applying chemistry towards the conservation of historic works of fine art.  Art runs deep in my family and painting has been a hobby since childhood, so Conservation Science is my calling!

Fun Facts

• 1. As a competitive figure skater, trained along side several Olympians including Sasha Cohen, Lu Chen, and Tonya Harding.
• 1. I’ve never lived in one place longer than 4 years – grad school will set the record at 5 (hopefully not longer!)
• 1. Tracy is not my real name. Seriously, it doesn’t exist on any legal documentation. Upon naturalization, I elected to keep the name my parents and grandparents gave me – Chun, which means purity in Chinese.