IRENE JAY LIU is a blog, print, radio and tv journalist, specializing in politics and investigative reporting.

She is currently news editor (data) at Thomson Reuters.

Previously, she was senior reporter and special projects team leader at the South China Morning Post based in Hong Kong, where she reported on transnational crime and law enforcement and led the paper's computer-assisted and document-based reporting projects.

Her feature on the Manila hostage crisis, "From relaxed joker to pitiless killer," is awarded first place in the "Best News Writing - English" category at the 2010 Hong Kong News Awards

She is an honorary lecturer at the University of Hong Kong, where she teaches a graduate-level course on computer-assisted reporting.

Until January 2010, she was a political writer for the Capitol Bureau of the Albany Times Union, where she wrote for print, was lead blogger for the paper's most-read blog, Capitol Confidential, and was an on-air correspondent for the statewide PBS television program New York Now.

She is a contributor to National Public Radio and has been heard on Morning Edition, Weekend All Things Considered, Talk of the Nation, as well as affiliate stations WNYC and KQED. Her investigative radio documentary on Chinese human smuggling, SNAKEHEAD, aired as a two-day series on NPR's Morning Edition.

Liu has been an adjunct professor at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, a fellow with the Toni Stabile Center for Investigative Journalism at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism and a correspondent for the Center for Investigative Reporting (CIR). She has reported in China, the Philippines, Thailand, Belize, Ukraine, Turkey and speaks Mandarin and Spanish.

Before becoming a journalist, she worked for years in the non-profit and philanthropic sector. While an undergrad at Yale, she cofounded and led Advanced Strategies for Healthcare Access, for which she was nominated for the Ford Foundation's Leadership in a Changing World award and profiled in The New York Times. She then worked as a consultant for the Annie E. Casey Foundation.

Irene grew up in the Show Me state, born and raised in St. Louis until her family moved to Shanghai, PRC in 1994. She still goes home to China, but has bounced up and down both US coasts for over a decade.

Irene graduated from Yale University in 2004 with a BA in Political Science. In May 2007, she earned a MS in Journalism from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.