Dr. Liang's research interests include magnetic resonance imaging, superresolution image reconstruction using a priori constraints, statistical and learning-based methods for biomedical image analysis, and their application to functional brain mapping, cancer imaging, and cardiac imaging.  He is a recipient of the Sylvia Sorkin Greenfield Best Paper Award of the Medical Physics Journal (1990), the NSF Research Initiation Award (1994) and CAREER Award (1995), and the IEEE-EMBS Early Career Achievement Award (1999). He was named Fellow of the UIUC Center for Advanced Study (1997), Henry Magnuski Scholar (1999-2001), and University Scholar (2001-2004). He has appeared several times in the Daily Illini Incomplete List of Excellent Teachers (1998-2000; 2005; 2007), and was selected as a Distinguished Lecturer of IEEE-EMB Society (2002-2005).  He was inducted as Fellow of American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (2004), received the Ronald W. Pratt Faculty Outstanding Teaching Award (2005), elected vice-president (conferences) of IEEE-EMBS (2006-2007; 2008-2009), elected Fellow of IEEE (2006), and received the Engineering Council Award for Excellence in Advising (2006, 2007).