A human-environment scientist and sustainability scholar, Dr. Jack Liu holds the Rachel Carson Chair in Sustainability, is University Distinguished Professor at Michigan State University and serves as director of the Center for Systems Integration and Sustainability. He is also a Guest Professor at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing.
Dr. Liu conducts research in the U.S., China and Brazil and takes a holistic approach to addressing complex human-environmental and agricultural challenges through systems integration, which involves integrating multiple disciplines such as ecology and social sciences. He is particularly keen to connect seemingly unconnected issues, for example divorce and environmental sustainability. His research has been published in journals such as Nature and Science and has been widely covered by the international news media. He has served on various international and national committees and panels. He is a member of the Board of Reviewing Editors for Science and was a coordinating lead author of the global assessment of biodiversity and ecosystem services organized by the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. Dr. Liu is also the founder of the International Network of Research on Coupled Human and Natural Systems (CHANS-Net.org) and past president of the U.S. Regional Association of the International Association for Landscape Ecology.
In recognition of his efforts and achievements in research, teaching, and service, Dr. Liu has received many awards, such as being elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, named a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), and elected as an honorary professor at Lanzhou University, China. He has received the Guggenheim Fellowship Award, the CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation, the Distinguished Landscape Ecologist Award, the Distinguished Service Award from US-IALE, the Sustainability Science Award, the Aldo Leopold Leadership Fellowship from the Ecological Society of America, as well as being named a Fellow in the society. In 2018 he was named in the Clarivate Analytics Highly Cited Researchers List, which recognizes influential researchers around the world.
Dr. Liu completed his B.S. at Hunan Agricultural University (China), his M.S. at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, and his PhD at the University of Georgia, Athens. He came to MSU after completing his postdoctoral work at Harvard University. He also was a visiting scholar at Stanford, Harvard and Princeton.