Katherine Liu is completing her PhD in the Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior program at the University of Minnesota. Her research consists of both empirical biology and philosophy. Experimentally she uses experimental evolution methods with unicellular and multicellular yeast to investigate the role of modularity in the evolution of heat tolerance. Her philosophical research focuses on reconceptualizing how we understand the causal relationships in the etiology of cancer and how experimental evolution methods tell us about the world.