Ningjian Liang's overall aim is to improve gut health of preterm/full-term infants and human adults. Her research has focused on human milk and bovine milk bioactive proteins, protein digestion and release of bioactive peptides.

In 2019, Ningjian Liang joined Dr. David Dallas’ research group as a postdoctoral scholar. One of her research areas is to identify bioactive peptides released during digestion in infants and adults. Another research area is to determine the structure and function of bioactive proteins in human milk influenced by different processing techniques.