Liu graduates as valedictorian

Published 2:51 pm Tuesday, June 10, 2014

Serena Liu of Bellevue graduated Sunday as one of five valedictorians in Dartmouth College’s class of 2014.

Liu earned a 4.0 grade point average in pursuit of her bachelor of arts. She majored in biology and minored in economics.

A Goldwater Scholarship and Kaminsky Family Fund Award financed her honors thesis in biology.

She received numerous other honors while attending Dartmouth, including induction into Phi Beta Kappa, designation as a Rufus Choate Scholar, a James O. Freedman Presidential Scholar and a recipient of a Paul K. Richter and Evalyn E. Cook Richter Memorial Fund Research Grant.

She worked as a tutor and a teaching assistant, held membership in the Handel Society and assisted at the Donald Claflin Jewelry Studio.

Handcrafted jewelry is a favored hobby of Liu’s, as is singing, embroidery, glassblowing, bead making and dancing.

Liu spent one summer as a research assistant to Tianxi Cai of the Harvard School of Public Health, as part of the Harvard-MIT Health Sciences and Technology Bioinformatics and Integrative Genomics summer program.

Liu plans to pursue a Ph.D. in computational biology in the University of Washington genome sciences program.